Twice be he damned.
He stood between the two doors. Two. The number rocked in his brain, searching for a sticking place, searching for a place to connect.
Two doors. Two doors standing for the ultimate struggle of Mars, and in a peculiar way, mankind itself.
The Martians, the First Martians, had left him here, for him to select. To make a choice he had no business making. A choice not his to make. A choice to be made by all, not one man alone.
He felt the pulsing of the reactors above him, even in this Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t, room. He stared at the doors, and their accursed lights above him. The shining cross, and the shining man.
Lights. Those blasted lights!
Suddenly he was angered beyond words, knowing only his fury. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to. He was a mathematician, for crying out loud. He didn’t like all this blasted “religious conflict.” He never had. This wasn’t the deal. This hadn’t been calculated.
He had no awareness of the passing of time. Even the power generators’ thrum had no rhythm. He knew not how long he’d been here, only that it was too long. His throat was dry, and his stomach cried for food, but still he stood, torn between life and death.
He thought of that for a moment. He was certain that if he chose one way instead of the other, he would die. He couldn’t tell how he was certain of this, but he was.
Though his anger still flowed, he sat. Sat and thought of his choices.
On one hand he had a choice that had always to him represented chaos. Secularism. The random unpredictability that stated that there was no God. No rhyme or reason to anything at all. A choice that had no structure to it.
On the other hand he had a choice that had always seemed best to him. The ordered, disciplined dependability of religion. Something that could be defined, a certain method to it. Madness, but with a method.
His two choices battled within his own mind. Religious and secular. Warring, winning, losing, returning, attacking, counterattacking, living, dying.
He was not even aware that he had gained his feet. Surprised, he found that his hands pounded on the walls, he kicked at the doors, he yelled and screamed and bellowed ‘til he thought the walls would fall down on his head.
And then he felt it.
A spot in the wall, softer than most. Made of foam, not plastic. Despite the low light, he tore at the foam, ripped it out until a third light shone between the first two.
The middle.
A common ground.
A choice neither one, nor the other. Something in between.
A crossroads.
A smile crinkled his face.
He had noted that the other two doors opened by pressing the lights, and so thus he did.
Behind him, a door slid open. The man standing in the frame stood silhouetted for a moment, then knelt and spoke.
“Only one other has ever solved this.” He said, without awe or disgust, but stating it as a fact. “ ‘When given two choices, choose the third in the middle.’ The greatest ever of the Martians. The first President.”
The disheveled man smiled back.
“I am Martian.”
