The first new thing was wind.
Not cave-breath – the slow exchange of a closed system, the soft sough of a body inhaling its own air back and calling it fresh. Wind from somewhere else, carrying a weight of distance, a freight of pollen and sunstruck rock.
Quinn lifted her head like a dog and felt it on the fine hairs inside her nose. It had edges, this wind. It had a quality she would have called sky if asked to name it with her eyes shut.
She stood slowly. Her knees said things about stone floors and time. Her headlamp illuminated a large shape of stacked bones and rock and that not-horse skull staring at nothing. The hum she had been tracking pardoned her for a second to let the wind announce itself.
Quinn aimed her light where the air moved and stole forward, boots quiet. She had called, already, and the odd replies had stopped – a discontinuation that was somehow worse than the wrong echoes. Now there was only the sound of gloved fingers brushing rock for balance, gravel scratching underfoot, and the faint hiss of her breath turning visible and then no longer showing any kind of cloud.
She rounded a shoulder of stone and found the way the wind came.
It was not a tunnel or chute. It wasn’t even really an aperture. A long slice in the wall, just big enough to let her put her face through or enter sideways if she were reckless. A different quality of dark lay on the other side. Not cave-dark but distance-dark. When her headlamp played over it, the light didn’t come back. It didn’t come back at all.
“My kind of bad idea,” she said and turned sideways.
The slice widened as she pushed into it. She slithered her arm through and called herself a worm. She wriggled. Her bag caught. She took it off and shoved it through and then dragged the rest of herself after the bag.
On the far side, the floor tipped up into a slope of broken rocks. She dug boot treads into grit. The breeze warmed and flowed around her with hints of sage and something like lake. Quinn climbed toward that promise.
#
On the other side of the chamber, separated by rock and circumstance and that eerily articulate hum, Riley had her face turned to the same wind. She felt her hard-won calm go liquid, then set again. She wrapped the foil blanket more tightly around herself. It was something to do, then sloughed it off with impatience, distracted by its crinkly noises. Sound mattered. She listened to echoes and rose into the wind carefully.
The cut in the wall was a different kind of darkness. She aimed her lamp and watched it vanish into the slice. Two turns of her head – one to check behind, one to check the floor – and then she committed. Her shoulder squeezed. She remembered, acutely and with unhelpful tenderness, pushing through the Keyhole and Brien behind her saying I’m okay with that small, brave lie. She exhaled and went forward to where the air would not be a lie.
When she squeezed through, she entered an expansive chamber. Her headlamp’s beam lost borders and became a pale suggestion. She clicked it off. Drafty blindness pressed attention into her ears. Distant ticking, remote and timeless. And behind that an enigmatic drone. The magic of absolute black was at least honest.
She flicked on her headlamp. A domed cavern appeared, grand as a basilica, crusty with stalactites. Not far off across the grotto, a tall woman stood.
Riley’s mind did quick, incorrect math. Reflection. Hallucination. Saw the headlamp in her hand, the bag. Saw the dirty kneepads. Saw the eyes, those narrow Slavic eyes in a pale broad face framed by flaccid, crayon-yellow hair, and she understood it as a bad mind trick: The eyes were hers. The lanky frame identical. But the clothes were different, and the haircut, unlike the ponytail Riley preferred, looked hacked and matted like long feathers. That was a possible person wearing her bones.
Quinn in turn saw a woman with her own features, those small eyes set deep as a pugilist’s and that lipless mouth, but with her lifeless hair grown long and gathered to a topknot. Her first thought was not supernatural. It was: Shit, I crouch like that when I’m confused and scared.
They moved in synchrony, the same cautious angle, the same one-two step-and-stop, like a dance taught to two people in two different rooms but coordinated by the same music. They came to a natural shelf above the tumble of rocks, a place where they stood on a level facing each other in the radiance of their headlamps.
“Hey,” Quinn said.
“Hi,” said Riley automatically.
Up close the wrongness intensified. The pug nose, yes. The ridiculously flat cheekbones, sure. The broad width of their lower jaw, indistinguishable. The differences were choices written on the same page in different inks. Riley’s eyebrows were a shade more disciplined, her eyes subtly defined. Quinn’s hair was even more ragged than it appeared from afar, cut in a bathroom with kitchen scissors. She didn’t have time for a stylist and, besides, she liked the way imperfection flipped authority the bird.
“What’s your name?” they both asked at once.
Riley edged forward a half-step with a gloved hand outstretched, mostly to show she was friendly but also to find out if this double was solid.
Quinn paused, fixated by the unreality of the encounter. For an unsure moment, she rocked back on her heels, taking in the identical details: pierced lobes, no earrings – the same constellation of tiny moles along her neck. Did she have a small pi tattoo on her right wrist? Pi – the biggest joke of all for Quinn – a piece of geometry, a measurement in the real world, that breaks out of the circle and runs to infinity. She removed her glove and exposed her tattoo.
Riley tugged off her glove and showed Quinn the tiny swallow inked between the thumb and index of her right hand.
Puzzlement at the different tattoos flickered inside their electrified recognition of identical fingers, big-knuckled and spatulate, with blunt-cut, unpainted fingernails sturdy as poker chips. The stricken look they shared asked, Are you for real?
They shook like two diplomats meeting after a small war. The contact was too much. They let go.
“Riley,” said Riley. “Kowacki.”
“Quinn,” Quinn returned on the same breath. “Kowacki.”
They stared.
“This can’t be real,” Riley asserted.
“Your dream or mine?” Quinn asked.
Eager to get through the strangeness to something human, Riley offered the most logical solace: “Unconscious on the cave floor? Dreaming all this…” She trailed off. The hum had intensified, set everything trembling.
Light from the two headlamps dimmed simultaneously, blinked brightly once, and snicked black.
“Hey!” they shouted together, plunged in utter darkness.
Grasping, they found each other.
#
FADE IN:
INT. LIMESTONE CAVERN – ABSOLUTE DARKNESS
QUINN (O.S.)
Okay. Not funny. Somebody turned off reality.
RILEY (O.S.)
What’s going on. Don’t let go.
QUINN
You have glowsticks? Mine are not lighting up. This is totally off-script.
RILEY
That’s what you’re doing? Glowsticks?
QUINN
Yeah. here. Snap this one.
RILEY
Nothing. None are working. That’s too weird.
QUINN
I used one earlier. Lit up fine. None of these others work. Electricity and chemistry just went on vacation.
RILEY
i can feel you shivering.
QUINN
Why aren’t you?
RILEY
I’d be more afraid if I was alone.
QUINN
Maybe I am alone.
RILEY
You think I’m a hallucination?
QUINN
Don’t you think I might be? Didn’t something really crazy happen when you squeezed into this cavern?
RILEY
Like nothing I’ve known before. I can’t describe it.
QUINN
Isekai.
RILEY
What? Like from manga? No. (Beat.) Oh God. Yes.
QUINN
Some kind of portal. Between worlds. And cluttered with bones.
RILEY
Human bones. Did you see the skulls?
QUINN
And that huge skull with lots of teeth?
RILEY
A giant reptile.
QUINN
We could be food or bait for something like that.
RILEY
Let’s not go there.
QUINN
Think about it. We’re identical you and me. netted from entangled universes. Right? Who could do that? Some kind of supertech. Aliens. AI. Why? What are the bones telling us?
RILEY
No.
QUINN
We’re crickets in a hyperdimensional terrarium. Pet food.
RILEY
That’s wacky.
QUINN
My nickname. Wacky. What’s yours?
RILEY
Please stop. I’m truly afraid. Out of my mind afraid, Quinn. This is no joke for me.
QUINN
I’m not joking.
RILEY
That’s really your nickname?
QUINN
All my friends call me Wacky Kowacki. And you?
RILEY (after a long beat)
I’m Smiley. Smiley Riley. My optimism gets on people’s nerves.
QUINN
You can start getting on my nerves now, Smiley.
RILEY
I want this to be a dream.
QUINN
I don’t think this is a dream.
(A pause. The dark hum continues beneath everything.)
RILEY
I have spare batteries. Hold on. They’re right here.
QUINN
They won’t work. Haven’t you seen the movie?
RILEY
Let go of my arm so I can reach my helmet.
QUINN
You’re calm. That’s suspicious.
RILEY
You’re cracking jokes. That’s suspicious.
QUINN
I do that when I’m terrified.
RILEY
I get calm when I don’t have a map.
QUINN
So we’re both liars.
RILEY
Or survivors.
QUINN
Same thing.
(A small laugh. It’s genuine. Then silence.)
QUINN
Swapped the battery yet?
RILEY
Yeah. It’s not working. Let’s try your lamp.
QUINN
Oh, come on.
RILEY
Sorry. I’m freaking. What’s happening?
QUINN
I believe in duck herding and true love. Not the supernatural. When electricity and chemistry stop working, it’s got to be a dream or a hallucination. That’s what’s happening.
RILEY
Or supertech. Aliens. AI.
QUINN
Right. I already said that.
RILEY
I don’t think it matters what we believe. Not anymore.
QUINN
I crawled into a cave for some me time, but this is nuts.
RILEY
You have any matches?
QUINN
No. And if I did.
RILEY
They wouldn’t light. I’ve seen the movie.
QUINN
Do you feel a thin breeze?
RILEY
That way.
QUINN
I can’t see anything. Don’t let go.
RILEY
I’m not. I’m trying to point your arm. Geez, strong grip. like… mine. This isn’t a dream, is it?
QUINN
This hum, it’s in my teeth now. Like the cave’s chewing on us.
RILEY
It’s louder. Feel that?
QUINN
A heartbeat under our feet.
RILEY
Could be a dragon.
QUINN (Snorts)
A planetary dragon. I read about that once. In a fantasy novel.
RILEY
About King Arthur’s parents. I can’t remember the story, but I remember the dragon.
QUINN
Me too. Big as the planet.
RILEY
That dragon ate my partner.
QUINN
What do you mean?
RILEY
My partner’s trapped back there — Brien. He followed me into the cave, and now he’s buried under rock.
QUINN
That’s horrible. How?
RILEY
My fault. I let him follow. Caves scare him, but he came anyway. For me. For us. We were talking kids, a future. Now he’s gone. And you’re here.
QUINN
I am here. Ease up a little on your grip. And perhaps you could make more of an effort to get on my nerves. You think you’ll see him again?
RILEY
I have to. I sketched the caverns in my notebook. To find my way back. I won’t leave him.
QUINN
That’s not an answer.
RILEY
Look where we are. There are no answers here.
QUINN
I don’t feel the breeze anymore. I say we move. Inch our way to a wall.
RILEY
Which way?
QUINN
You lead. I got myself lost. Maybe you’re the me who can get me out.
RILEY
That’s poetic. Trusting yourself blindly.
QUINN
I trust geology. Let’s find a wall.
RILEY
Slow down. You’re pushing. You said I would lead.
QUINN
Sorry. I’m trying something new. Following.
RILEY
You ever wish you were someone else?
QUINN
Every day.
RILEY
Well, now you are. To me.
(Beat.)
QUINN
That’s funny. What are we then? Two versions of the same woman?
RILEY
Feels scary. Watch your step. Some rimstone here.
QUINN
Scary? Or strangely sexy? Alone in the dark with your sexiest self.
RILEY
Stop it, Quinn.
QUINN
Admit it. When you saw me, you saw your rough-cut self. And you like it. I know. I saw you with your long hair and superfine eyebrows. I look good as you. Larger eyes.
RILEY
Liner and eyeshadow.
QUINN
You’re a sexy me.
RILEY
You’re talking crazy because you’re scared. This is insane.
QUINN
Exactly. What happened to reality?
RILEY
Another gour. Step down this time. At least there are no bones underfoot. Don’t push.
QUINN
You think we’re going to die?
RILEY
Brien might already be dead.
(Extended silence overlaying the crunch of gravel.)
QUINN
Keep talking. Tell me what you’re feeling.
RILEY
The cave fill is getting dense. We’re approaching a wall.
QUINN
I mean, how do you feel in this creepy darkness about losing Brien – and finding me?
RILEY
I’m not even sure there is a me.
QUINN
You smell like me.
RILEY
Put your arm out. Here’s the wall.
QUINN
I’m scared stiff, Riley. Not from the weird noises in the dark or being lost underground. You. You terrify me. You make me wonder if I’m already dead – and you’re the me I didn’t let live.
RILEY
I’ve wondered about that, too. If I’m dead, maybe Brien is alive. Do you feel the wall?
QUINN
Yeah. Hey. Does this feel like calcrete to you?
RILEY
Nope. This isn’t the hardpan cavern I crawled into. You?
(A deep breath. The darkness hums louder.)
RILEY
What do you think this place is?
QUINN
A mouth.
RILEY
Of what?
QUINN
Whatever reality uses to speak to itself.
RILEY
And we’re just the echo?
QUINN
No. We’re the question.
(Silence again. This one isn’t heavy. It listens.)
RILEY
Quinn?
QUINN
Yeah?
RILEY
This wall does feel … different. It’s tough but …
QUINN
Not rock. Maybe dragon hide. How can that be?
RILEY
Perhaps there’s no explanation, because we’re insane.
QUINN
Or we’re inside a dragon.
RILEY
I’m serious.
QUINN
I’m not.
RILEY
If this is insanity…
QUINN
We’re not getting out of here until we get real. And if we get real, we have to admit – there can’t be two of us. That’s not possible.
(Beat.)
RILEY
You think one of us is fake?
QUINN
Or both.
RILEY
No more jokes.
QUINN
Reality is the joke. Haven’t you noticed? A lot of what looks obvious isn’t real. The sun doesn’t rise. A straw doesn’t really bend in a glass of water.
RILEY
Save it for when we get out of here. I’ve got to find Brien.
QUINN
Brien. Future dad to your future children. The one who followed you down here like a puppy.
RILEY
Don’t mock him. He’s real. If he’s alive, he needs me.
QUINN
And Peggy needs me. Or thinks she does. She’s probably watering the garden right now, wondering why I’m not home making dumb jokes about mulch.
RILEY
Peggy?
QUINN
My partner. The one who wants everything serious. Roots in the ground. No more dodging with laughs.
RILEY
Sounds familiar. A stalagmite here. Budge left with me. Slow. Brien wants the house, the kids. Stability. Whoa! You all right? Get up slow. Take my arm. Here’s the wall again. The friggin irony of Brien and me is I… I push back on him because I need … what? Something new, I guess. The unknown.
QUINN
I’ve had enough of the unknown. Right now, I want what’s real.
RILEY
Maybe this is real. Darkness. Beyond headlamps and glowsticks.
QUINN
And the laws of physics.
RILEY
The nothing from which everything is.
QUINN
What are you – a Buddhist?
RILEY
I’m a Kowacki. Doubt everything.
QUINN
Believe nothing. That’s your motto, too?
RILEY
Since i was twelve.
QUINN
Yeah. Same. Even science changes. Have you heard about spooky action at a distance? If you can’t trust Einstein, what’s left to believe?
RILEY
There’s a fin here. Put your arms on my waist. We’ll edge around it to the left.
QUINN
Wobbly footing from cave popcorn. Don’t step. Just shuffle.
RILEY
We’ve become nothing instead of something.
QUINN
We’re not nothing.
RILEY
Aren’t we? You said so yourself. There aren’t two of us. That’s impossible. So long as we’re together, we’re nothing.
QUINN
Like the cat in the physics experiment. Not alive. Not dead.
RILEY
Not you. Not me. We’re locked in a box. And when it opens…
QUINN
One of us won’t be here. (Beat.) How did this happen?
RILEY
Did it? We don’t know. Maybe we’re in a dragon’s belly.
QUINN
Or unconscious on the cave floor. Dreaming.
RILEY
Here’s the wall again. I’m pussyfooting a sharp decline. Hold my hand. Give me some lead, see where this goes. (Boots sliding, scratching grit.) We could experiment. Split. Try to find our own way back to the portal – and get out of the box. Become somebody again.
QUINN
I don’t want to be alone here.
RILEY
I feel the same, Wacky.
QUINN
Why have you stopped?
RILEY
The hum.
QUINN
It’s gone.
RILEY
Let’s keep moving. Tricky footing here. Up and down. Take it easy.
(Long beat. Crunching gravel.)
QUINN
You have parents?
RILEY
Sure. Well, one parent. Mother is depressive. She copes. I try to help. Usually, I just make it worse. Step down. You?
QUINN
Foster homes. My parents died in a boating accident when I was an infant.
RILEY
Is that how you got to be Wacky? Making strangers into family by telling jokes?
QUINN
Are you trying to shrink-wrap me, Smiley?
RILEY (A soft laugh)
I’ve already got a line on you, sister. You’re me with a rebel attitude and a bad haircut.
QUINN
Right. And you, you’re me with a… Hey! Stop pulling.
RILEY
Feel that draft? Come on!
QUINN
You’re moving too fast. Could be a drop off. You want to air rappel?
RILEY
i think we’re close. It’s coming from ahead.
QUINN
Could be a vertical shaft. Don’t rush.
RILEY
Feels crisp.
QUINN
Oh! Wait. I feel it too. You’re right. This current is from outside.
RILEY
I think I smell trees. Conifers. Like Christmas.
QUINN (Brightly)
Santa’s workshop.
RILEY
It’s definitely fresh air. Flowing around this bend. Come on. We’ll turn here.
QUINN
Whatever is on the other side better make sense.
RILEY
Let’s find out.
QUINN
Wait. Hold up. We don’t make sense. Who are we?
RILEY
Really, Quinn? Now? Let’s get the hell out of here and find out.
QUINN
No. That’s too dangerous to do quickly. We don’t know what’s out there.
RILEY
Or in here.
QUINN
Yeah but at least you’re here.
RILEY
Want to touch my face and remind yourself how impossible this is? I think what’s possible is up ahead.
QUINN
Your optimism is finally getting on my nerves, Smiley. We need a grip on where we are before we move ahead.
RILEY
It’s too dark here for that. Where we are is who we are. I’m Riley. And I belong with Brien. Let’s go.
QUINN
No, not yet. Wait. Let’s not run away. Again. That’s how we got here.
RILEY (Draws a deep breath – uncoils a sigh)
You’re right. We both run from the same thing.
QUINN
Being known too well.
RILEY
Or knowing ourselves too well.
(A beat. Their footsteps shuffle carefully over stone.)
QUINN
Hold on, Riley. Isn’t being here with me – isn’t this the most unreal real thing that’s ever, ever happened to you? How can it be about anything else but us?
RILEY
What if it isn’t? What if all this is me in shock about Brien?
QUINN
And I’m a delusion?
RILEY
What are you doing?
QUINN
Taking your hand, getting your glove off. Feel my face. It’s your face.
RILEY
You’re crying.
QUINN
Yeah.
RILEY
Okay. Right. Not a delusion. Come here. Give us a hug. You’re right. You’re right to cry. We’re lost, and I erased you. Brien isn’t here. You are. (Beat.) And you are me. However we understand that.
(Silent interlude.)
RILEY (continues)
This isn’t about getting out, is it? I mean, meeting you here proves that, doesn’t it? What if it’s about … getting in? To who we are.
QUINN
Deep. You sound like one of Peggy’s self-help books. But yeah. I don’t think we’re two people. We’re one mess, split in half.
RILEY
Echoes of each other.
QUINN
Falling in love with what we can’t have.
RILEY
Or what we already are. Schizo parts of the same person.
QUINN
Same face, same bones, different lives.
RILEY
Here to join together. My optimism, your snark.
QUINN
And make what? A snarky optimist?
RILEY
Whoever you are – whoever I am – we’re talking in circles.
QUINN
Going round like a dorodango.
RILEY
I want to meet this mystery with you here in the dark, Quinn. I do. But I have to get out. Get help. Get Brien.
QUINN
You’re right. Dead or alive, in the dragon’s belly, or dreaming, we have to move on, stop circling around each other in the dark. Evolve. Not revolve.
RILEY
And if we can’t?
QUINN
Then at least we’ll go out arguing.
(They both laugh. This one lands.)
RILEY
So. Are you ready? One step at a time?
QUINN
And don’t let go.
RILEY
I wasn’t going to.
QUINN
Me neither.
(A pause. Then, together – )
QUINN / RILEY
Let’s go.
FADE OUT.
Hand-in-hand, through drafty blindness that slowly relented, they inched around the curve of the cavern. Remote walls and a steep slope of strewn rocks appeared gray and ghostly.
The slope ascended toward milky light. Riley knelt and put her palms flat to the pitched ground in gratitude and muttered a small prayer for Brien. Silence answered, and she was glad for the absence of echoes.
Quinn pulled the dorodango from her pack and, when Riley sat back in the curdled darkness, pressed it into her hand. “If we’re really one,” she said, “this is yours. Its luck will help you find him. And if we get separated, you’ll know we were real.”
Riley received the orb more by feel than sight.
“It’s a ball of dirt,” Quinn said. “I compacted it with spit and polished it with cloth.”
“It’s totally Wacky.” Riley clutched the smooth sphere like a promise. She tugged out her sketchbook. “Take it. In case.”
“In case,” Quinn agreed and stuffed the notebook in her bag.
“Use it to find Brien,” Riley insisted. “It’s a map of the caverns that leads to the Keyhole where I lost him. I won’t need it. It’s written on my heart.”
“We’ll find him.” Quinn helped Riley to her feet. “I’m optimistic.”
In the half-light, their faces almost touched. Fiercely close, eyes steel-hard with recognition, they shared a bright moment of hope with a slant smile for the absurdity of it all. And together they climbed.
It was not far. It took all the time in the world.