Noah sensed that in such a case his existence would surely be “terminated.” So he moved his legs with the last of his strength. The stairs slowly curved around the well. With each passing step, another step appeared, as if mocking his efforts.
“Perhaps I really should sit down and take a rest?” an insistent thought buzzed. “Just for a short minute. What could possibly go wrong in one minute?..”
Noah felt his knees beginning to buckle.
“Right there, on that step. If I sat for just a minute, then I could continue again.”
His eyes grew heavier and heavier. Even his breathing started to slow down.
“Half a minute would be enough. Right there, on that step…”
The chosen step drew closer slowly. Worn smooth by time, and at first glance, so comfortable.
When darkness filled his eyes, Noah didn’t immediately realize that he had closed them against his will. Suddenly panicked, he freed one hand and, clenching his teeth, dipped his fingers into the bucket of water. At once, his head filled with shrill, unearthly screams and incomprehensible prayers. It shook him greatly, driving sleep away. Noah gasped, almost collapsing on the stairs with all his load. Gripping the pole more tightly, he immediately quickened his climb.
Yet the feeling of weakness flowed back relentlessly, taking over his joints and his mind again.
The light in the ceiling finally stopped flickering and vanished. Only the ghostly glow of the water remained, by which Noah could still faintly see his path. The stairs led into absolute darkness, still refusing to end. It began to seem as if the steps themselves had suddenly multiplied, as if this damned nightmare would never end. He would keep climbing and climbing, with ever-increasing weight on his shoulders, teetering on the edge of sleep. And it would go on until he lost his mind.
As his eyes began closing again, Noah repeated his earlier trick with the water in the bucket. Whatever was in that water, it worked like a thousand volts on his nervous system. But... even that stimulus eventually seemed too weak. Fatigue returned faster and faster. Noah no longer even looked toward the top of the stairs; he just stared at his feet, ordering his heavy legs to move. They still moved. He no longer knew why both his legs were still working or where they were even carrying him. Only one thought remained in his head—to get somewhere, at any cost…
His foot caught on a step, and Noah fell forward, unable to keep his balance. He heard both buckets crash loudly against the stone, spilling their contents. He hardly cared. The urge to sleep was too strong.
“Maybe this termination of existence isn’t such a bad thing after all,” a stray thought crossed his mind. Soon, that one thought was swallowed by darkness, which…
* * *
…was instantly scattered by blinding white light.
Noah’s eyes flew wide open. He blinked several times, trying to make out something in the glow. Only after several long moments did he realize he was staring into the strong beam pouring from the grotto ceiling. The fatigue and the urge to sleep had vanished completely.
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He sat up and looked around. The pole, together with the buckets, lay right there, on the last step of the stairs. All the water had spilled and spread across the platform at the top of the cliff. Right up to the edge of the abyss, where a very weak stream flowed downward, into the impenetrable darkness.
By a hair’s breadth, he had made it, and for some reason, it had worked. The beam of light looked just as strong as it had been when he first arrived in this place, but now Noah had no intention of wasting precious time. Grabbing both buckets, he hurried down to the water pump. There, on the grotto floor, he also found his tablet. Noah suddenly remembered one very important thing.
His cherished and carefully tended YouTube page… was now lost. Unopenable.
Speechless, he stood for a while staring at the device’s black screen. At last, with a sigh, he decided he had no choice but to solve his problems in order. First the water, then everything else.
Filling both buckets, Noah easily carried them up and, this time, poured the water directly into the abyss. The light blazing above his head brightened slightly, as if praising him for a job well done. But the question gnawed at him—would two buckets last long?
He went back down and filled both again, but this time didn’t hurry to carry them. Picking up the tablet, he switched it on.
Unlike he expected, the reviving device didn’t show the manufacturer’s logo on the screen. For a moment, the “Android” logo flashed, then the tablet showed something new—a charging battery icon. The battery was charged only to 20%.
“So, one bucket of water equals ten percent,” Noah thought. He faced four more trips to the abyss with full buckets. But now climbing the stairs no longer felt so hard. The problem no longer seemed so complicated.
Only the loss of the YouTube window hurt a lot.
Soon, Noah discovered something else. Each time he poured a bucket of glowing water into the abyss, the tablet briefly displayed a new pop-up message about the charge status. There was no other way to see such information. The worst part seemed to be that the tablet gave an alarm only when the charge dropped to the ten percent level. On the other hand… Noah remembered that most of that time he had wasted searching for an outlet in the walls. Otherwise, he would have easily managed to pour the first two buckets in time.
“So, my current purpose of existence is to monitor the ‘charge’ and replenish it in time,” Noah thought, carrying the last two buckets of water to the top. “A pretty shitty purpose. Did the admins really think of nothing better?”
No matter how hard he tried to make sense of it, Noah couldn’t think of any proper explanation. First of all, why buckets? Wouldn’t it be simpler to give him a hose? Perhaps some secret meaning lay in the stairs themselves? Maybe the act itself was a ritual he was doomed to perform forever, just to remain ‘alive’?
Too many questions and too few answers.
Noah poured the last two buckets of water into the abyss. This time, the tablet played him a short melody, as if congratulating him on his birthday. A new message appeared on it:
“Congratulations! You have just successfully replenished your charge for the first time!
Don’t forget to do this regularly, otherwise your existence will be terminated!”
“You really could have left out that second part, you hooting lot…” Noah muttered sarcastically.
Suddenly, another thought occurred to him—what if he poured in two more buckets?.. Would the tablet register the extra water and announce a 120% charge?
Since there was no one here to stop him, the young man went down to the water pump and filled the bucket to the brim. Meeting no resistance, Noah filled the other bucket too. Sliding the pole under the handles, he tried to lift the load.
But this time, unlike before, the two buckets seemed especially heavy. So heavy that Noah could barely lift the pole up to his chest. As if some extra force had switched on. Soon, he was forced to lower the buckets back onto the ground.
“Of course… So there are limits after all,” he panted, catching breath he no longer needed.