Journey to the Unknown Regions of the Extreme Outside

— It was a harmless idea. We didn’t think it would be a problem.

— You and your companion decide to sneak into the extreme outside while the world’s top minds are discussing sunblock and you didn’t think that would be a problem?

— We wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before.

— Really? And what was that?

— We wanted to catalogue and measure the world that exists beyond known experience.

— What makes you think such a world exists?

— We’ve heard things.

— What? Voices in your heads?

— No. Stories and such.

— From whom?

— Nobody special. Crazy people. Blind seers.

— Blind seers? Come now.

— They all say the extreme outside doesn’t even contain a stuffed moose or a flock of birds singing do-wop to console us.

— So you decided ...

— We wanted to see for ourselves. We were hoping National Geographic Explorer would put us on the show. We wanted adventure, something more.

— Something more than your beautifully decorated world?

— Well, yes.

— So you opened the steel door. Contrary to all ...

— Yes.

— And you and your companion walked through it.

— Yes.

— You weren’t afraid?

— Only when the door slammed behind us. Our hearts were banging.

— And your paraphernalia?

— We took that with us.

— That must have cost ...

— We saved up.

— You saved up for ten mules, thirty pieces of luggage, a sextant, four telescopes, microphones, a transducer, nets, and specimen cases?

— Yes.

— Doing what?

— We worked four jobs. Delivering pizza. Delivering car parts. Driving old people to doctor’s appointments. Catering weddings. We saved our tips.

— And you believed this ... equipment ... made you explorers?

— Yes. That and our enthusiasm. We wanted to be like the pair who scaled Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador in 1802. They found domestic flies at 16,600 feet.

— That expedition took five years. You were planning to explore the extreme outside for five years?

— Not really. We thought it’d take a couple of hours, maybe the afternoon. We live in faster times.

— How old are you?

— Twenty-eight. My companion’s twenty-nine.

— So. The steel door shuts behind you.

— It slammed. The steel door slams behind us.

— All right. Slams. Then what?

— We set up camp.

— On the other side of the door.

— Yes.

— The whole thing begs credulity. You call yourselves explorers and yet you don’t move five feet beyond the steel door?

— Well, no. We were busy making base camp. We put up the tent. Tethered the mules. Brought out the folding canvas chairs. Then I made notes in my journal. My companion set up his easel.

— Don’t say it. He was working in oils.

— Water colour. He did a rather deft likeness of our surroundings.

— Deft likeness ...?

— It’s a phrase explorers use. He called the picture Journey to the Unknown Regions of the Extreme Outside.

— So there you are sitting on the other side of the steel door writing in your journal while your companion executes his deft likeness.

— Yes.

— What did you write about?

— You can have my journal. Everything’s in there.

— We’d rather hear it from you. If you don’t mind.

— Well, the first thing I wrote about was hanging a net from one of the mule’s saddlebags. My idea was to capture the insects.

— There were insects.

— There seemed to be. There was a loud and pervasive insect buzz. We couldn’t see them. Only hear the noise. I wanted to catch the insects so I could identify them.

— And you found?

— Nothing. After my companion completed his picture he used the loudness meter to measure the sound of the buzz. It came in at 28.6 which is high but well within international standards. Then he used the transducer prism and discovered the sound was not insect buzz at all but amplified silence. Which explains why the net remained empty.

— There were no insects.

— No. No insects. But there was multi-directional wind and the colour of the sky was strange. My companion painted the sky the colour of concrete.

— How long into your expedition were you at this point?

— Forty-seven minutes.

— So all you discovered in forty-seven minutes was that the extreme outside is silent. Didn’t the wind make any noise?

— No, the wind was silent.

— Okay. As you say. What about the terrain?

— It was made up of rocks varying in size from small stones to boulders. All the surfaces appeared to be covered with a white knobbly material.

— And the vista?

— It stretched unimpeded to the horizon in all directions so that the effect was like being in the centre of a white saucer.

— What did you make of that?

— That human beings are indeed the centre of the universe, even the universe of the extreme outside.

— What about the steel door? Where was it?

— In the centre of the saucer with us.

— Carry on.

— Using a penknife I then gathered particles from the ground cover and mixed them with the bottled water we’d brought. The mixture turned out to be plaster of Paris.

— The material used for making moulds.

— Yes. This fact scared us, and also the fact that the plaster appeared to be the quick-drying kind. We became careful not to spill water or urinate near our feet or the feet of the mules. We feared the environment might be a hostile one.

— This fact never occurred to you before you went through the steel door?

— No.

— What was your companion doing while you made the plaster of Paris?

— Preparing lunch. Mushroom omelettes. Greens in vinaigrette. White wine. He’d unpacked the China and silverware and the Primus stove from our luggage.

— And after lunch?

— We napped. Then we recorded the wind velocity which remained fairly steady at 4071, gusting to 4083.5. It was then my companion noticed the sky was staining.

— Staining?

— Looking wet. Like stains on concrete.

— What time was this?

— About two hours into the expedition.

— And that was when?

— Yes. We noticed that ours and the mule’s exhalations of carbon dioxide began turning into clouds of vapour. Small cirrus-like clouds began forming about our persons and about the mules. The clouds were quite incredible. They had a blue and gold tinge around the edges and were beautiful to look at. They shimmered.

— Was this when you started banging on the steel door?

— Not then. My companion began work on another picture, this one in oils. He was captivated by the clouds. He called them sublime.

— Sublime. And you?

— I became excited. Not so much because of the clouds, but because the longer we remained in the extreme outside the larger our personal clouds became and the smaller we appeared in relation to them and to our surroundings. It was as if we were shrinking as the vapour around us expanded. I said to my companion, Hold on! There might be a theory and an equation here!

— When did the rain start?

— Right about then. It happened suddenly. There was no lead up of singular drops. It was as if a switch had been flipped. It was a light though steady downpour. I didn’t get a chance to figure out an equation.

— And the banging on the door started then.

— Yes. Because the rain and our vapour clouds combined to liquefy the plaster of Paris surface. Then the wind whipped it about. We had to keep moving so we wouldn’t harden in place.

— How long did you and your companion bang on the steel door before you were rescued?

— A long time. Maybe thirty minutes. Meanwhile the rain stopped and everything around us was rapidly hardening. We were near exhaustion. Finally, we thought to use the wooden tent poles, our fists being useless. That’s what caused you to hear us.

— And the mules?

— We lost them. They were covered in white plaster of Paris by then. But we could hear them braying faintly. It was awful. Soon after they became boulders.

— You must realize how lucky you are to be rescued.

— We do.

— It wasn’t an easy operation. Heavy equipment had to be used. The plaster of Paris had to be pulverized around your persons. You were already hardening in place. Your companion had fallen ...

— We’re very grateful.

— We will confiscate your journal and your companion’s two pictures, of course. Besides your selves, that’s all that survived the expedition.

— Of course. Take them.

— For obvious reasons.

— Yes.

— And you will forget about the steel door and what you saw on the other side of it.

— We will.

— If any mention is ever made ...

— We understand. And we’re sorry. We don’t want to go there ever again. It was the worst experience of our lives. We’d rather remain in the familiar world. We don’t want to be in a world made up of silence, rocks, and vapour. And we hate plaster of Paris.

— Good.

— We have one last question, though. Is the extreme outside where you put criminals and dead people?

— A question like that will jeopardize your rescue.

— You mean we shouldn’t ask such questions?

— That is correct.

— Ever?

— Never. Do you agree?

— We do. As we said, we don’t want to go through the steel door again. We’ll never ask another question.

— All right then. We believe you. Yours and your companion’s stuffed moose are waiting for you in the anteroom.

— Thank you. We’re really grateful.

— You can count your blessings.

— We do. We will.

— Then we’ll call in the birds to sing do-wop. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

— We would!

— Here they are now. They’ve come to close the pages of your story ...