Quintell Project Notes and Progress
Excerpts from the diary of Jeremy Howell, a reporter for the Crescent Valley Herald.
These are some entries from the diary of Mr. Howell, that was found among the books
in the Library of the Maze, hidden behind some other books, and presumably never shown
to Quintell. There were some notes that Mr. Howell was among the fifteen people who
traveled through the maze after the last renovation in 1983, but little is know of him
other than his work with the Herald before he ventured through the maze, nothing can
be found about him since. The entries speak for themselves and are unedited except for
grammar and spelling:
Visited with Quintell today about an hour and a half concerning my request to
document the maze experience. He insisted that nothing should be published before his
death, but he was intrigued with the idea of having a first-person account of a
"pilgrim", as he liked to refer to them, attempting to transverse the maze. I asked
him what the future of the maze was in the years ahead, and all he would say is that
"it would go as he went", one of the many enigmatic phrases he uttered in my interview
with him. He said he would waive the normal "entrance fee", He refused to tell me the
amount, as well as the "reward" he offered for successfully completing the maze. There
was a complete wall of secrecy concerning the "stakes" of someone "running the maze"
(his term). He wouldn't respond to many questions about the maze, saying he wanted to
give me as little information as any other "runner". He said that only one person is
in the maze at a time, and the maze is thoroughly cleaned and "re-set" in between.
He assured me that there were no specific dangers within the maze that one didn’t
bring on oneself (falling down a ladder, for instance). Either pushing a "panic button"
which is in nearly every room, or no activity for twelve hours and people would be
sent to find him, and the run would be over. He assured me that no surveillance was
done within the maze, either visual or sound, and the only information that was collected
was the opening and closing of doors or hatches (and when they happened) and when
"color changes" occurred (I don't know what he meant by that). This was all done by
some computer he had bought and had programmed, This was, he said, all done without any
people in the complex, except someone coming by to "change the paper", whatever that means.
Emergency response was "within a hour or so", if a button was pushed, "if you get so you
can't stand it any more", as he put it. Other than that, he said that I wouldn't be
hungry or thirsty, too cold or hot, or lacking in room, board or facilities, and I could
spend as much time as I wanted in there "up to a year", as he said with a smirk. What does
he mean? I expect perhaps a couple of days, maybe three to solve the maze or know it can't be
solved, leaving me plenty of time for writing. He asked me what I was going to use to write
on, and I showed him this notebook, all blank. He looked it over and said, "Fine, but it's
much fancier that the ones I have available 'inside' (the maze, presumably), why don't you
just use the one I provide?". I didn't know that he provided any writing materials within the
maze, but I said I wanted to include some preliminary notes before going in, and he said "OK,
but no pencils or pens, there are plenty of them inside, I'll let you bring this one in", giving
it back to me. I started to ask him some more questions about the maze, but he waved me off, saying
"maybe after you come out, it'll be a more interesting discussion then". He then handed me a
slip of paper with an address, saying that people there would prepare me for the maze, and have
arrangements for handling my affairs while I'm inside. "I wouldn't want you to give up just because
of something you'd be worrying about outside here. Give up..." and he leaned forward, "when you can't
go on".
...
They are letting me spend a few minutes to make notes before going on. The last hour or so was spent
answering dozens of questions about every aspect of my life, signing release after release, powers of
attorneys, notes on my rent, friends, all things that I should be attending to for who knows how long.
They didn't give me a physical, but I felt quite naked after they were done, especially about any
medicines I might be taking (I don't take any). One man spent a long time going over this notebook,
looking through every page (although, curiously, not spending much time reading what I had written
before). Whether he was looking for some secret codes, or something else hidden within the notebook,
I couldn't tell. What could they be worried about? They just told me I had to wrap up the writing
in the next couple of minutes, so my next entry should be inside.
...
Here I am, finally, inside the maze. I am stopping to write this before doing anything, while all my
impressions are fresh. They put a blindfold on and led to to a car, driving for about twenty minutes,
and then stopping, led me up a long path, up several flights of stairs -- apparently still outside --
and through a door, placing me in a seat. They said to count slowly to ten and take off the blindfold,
and I could hear them walking out a door, closing and locking it, and then silence. I pulled off the
blindfold to look about the room. The room is large, square, and it has a tall ceiling. I was in a
lounge chair on one wall, but there was a small writing-desk with a wooden chair againt the far wall,
so I sat down there, found a pencil on the desk, and am writing this at that desk. How appropriate and
convenient that this desk is in here! I wonder, is it here only for me, or for all the "runners".
I just go up to pace the room, and it, indeed, seems perfectly square, and even the ceiling seems about
as tall as the length of a wall, about nine feet. In the middle of three of the four walls is a door, with
a number on it, and one wall with no number and no doorknob, which looks secure from the other side.
Was that the one I was brought in through? The most bizzare element of this room is in the center, where
there is a circular metal staircase, like you would see in a library, leading up to a trap door in the
ceiling -- also with a number -- and leading down to another trap door in the floor. It is af if I am
enclosed in a large uncast die with possible entryways or exits in each of the six sides. So I am to assume
that I am in a three-dimensional maze, which I hadn't counted on, but no matter, I can certainly solve it
anyway.
As I look at this room, I am impressed by how "normal" it looks, if utilitarian. The walls are smooth, painted,
probably, some kind of off-white, and the floor is a light gray linoleum. The lighting has a distinct yellow
tinge from recessed bulbs hidden by a boxed structure at the intersection of the walls and the ceiling,
which is itself flat and smooth.
I just noticed a note on a folded piece of paper in one of the recesses of this writing-desk, it has on
it, written in a fancy scrawl, "Make your way to the Exit Room". It seems that this is my only instruction
to be needed in this place. It is well and good to be sitting here writing this, but I am anxious to start
with this adventure, so I am going to start with checking these doors and making my way through this maze,
so I will stop and write when something interesting has happened.
It is now, probably, more than an hour since my last entry, although time is unmeasurable in this place with no
windows or timepieces. I have, in that time, lived through exhileration and despair. I found one of the doors
in the Entry Room unlocked (the other two were locked) and I opened it and walked through to the next room.
It was exactly the same as the first! Not exactly exactly, the chalk-board was on a different wall than in
the first room, the chair in a different corner, but essentially an identical room, same colors, lighting,
floor, ceiling... So I may infer that the entire maze is made up of these none-foot by nine-foot rooms, with
each having six doors and hatches to different rooms. Some doors will be locked, and some unlocked. I wonder
why he even put in all these doors, if they were to be simply unaccessable. So I sat down and the desk in my
second room to start writing again, and then put down my pen. I had brought in a pencil, a pen, and chalk from
the first room, the Entry Room, but I saw that this room also had writing supplies, so I went back into the
first room and put those back. I guess what I had been told, that nothing other than the notebook was to move
from room to room made some kind of sense, since each room would have what I would need in writing implements.
But I was interested in what new paths led from this room, so I went and tried each of the doors, and the two
hatches, ceiling and floor. All locked. I then went through the open door I came in through, adn tried all the
doors and hatches of that room. Also all locked. I went back to the second room, and sat at the desk to
contemplate what to do. This can't be the end of this trip. I looked for a long time at the "panic button"
in the room placed on the wall next to the chalkboard -- a keypad with ten buttons, and a sign above which
read, "Enter number of this room for Emergency Exit". It finally occurred to me that I might have another message
in this desk, and looked in the same cubby on this desk, and there was a note which said, "One door closes, another
one will open". I looked through the open door to the other room, and wondered if the maze "knew" a door was
open, and that's what the problem was! They had said that the control center for the maze kept track of the opening
and closing of doors. I walked over to the door and closed it. I noticed a very faint click after the door was
closed, and I immediately panicked, and re-opened the door. Still unlocked. I closed it again and began checking
the other doors. The floor hatch was now unlocked! All other doors (except the one I came in from) were locked,
so, with renewed enthusiasm, I went down the hatch, and the spiral stairs below.
I have gome through perhaps a dozen rooms, going through a door or hatch when I found it unlocked, and closing
it immediately behind me after going through. I am now sitting in one of these maddingly similar-but-different
rooms, at the writing-desk, and wondering where I am. I have not hit any dead ends, but I wonder if some of the
rooms I have gone through might have had other paths out of there or "splits". "A path diverged in the wood", or
something like that. I haven't been checking for them once I found an unlocked door. Certainly, without more complexity,
this maze would be very simple to solve, indeed. I needed to gather more information. I thought that the chalk-boards
may be the way to keep notes inside a room, if I happened to enter in twice. For all I know, I might have been going
in circles, I should at least make a note that I've been there. And if I write which door I came in from, and which
door I was leaving with, then I could back-track quickly by just reading the boards and reversing the path. But the
boards were not on a consistant wall, not always "east", for instance (although directions are relative here). I
came up with the following codes, front, back, left, right, up, and down. So, as soon as I enter a room, I
will note the way I came in, i.e. "in left", and after finding an exit, I'll write, "out down", or whatever.
So with my new strategy, I will start out again.