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The first time you see her, she stops you dead in your tracks.
Shrouded in mist curling from the waters around her, the stark lines of her sides bleak against the graying sky, the thunder that threatens to burst into rain and soak her. Two towers bracket her frame, bleak and foreboding over the expanse of ocean.
Despite it all, despite the danger that creeps under your skin and tingles up your spine, you take a step towards her. With each step, she seems to loom taller and taller over you.
Something hits you from behind, breaking you out of your spell. When you turn to face the source, it’s just your guide. He is not looking at you; his face is craned upwards to stare at the building. You cannot see his eyes behind his dark glasses, but somehow you can tell he is frightened.
“Come,” he says, reaching his hand towards you. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”
Your guide explains to you in slow, halting words, who and what she is. “It’s a prison,” he explains. “Meant to hold some – someone capable.”
“Capable of what?” you ask. “Who?”
He shakes his head. “No one knows. None of us go near it. It’s said to be inescapable.”
You crane your neck backwards to peer at the prison again. It is raining, now, over her blackened walls, and something about it makes you ache.
They welcome you, their eyes kind, their voices sad, into their midst. Someone invites you to stay in their house, safe from mobs in the night. You thank them, grasp their hands in gratitude, but as night falls, you find yourself gazing out the window, towards the west, the sinking sun, the prison.
Your feet carry you out of your host’s house, hoping they don’t hear the click of the door as you close it. As if in a dream, you seem to glide towards the prison, sticking close to the light of the pathway, avoiding the mobs moving slowly, aimlessly in the distance.
And then she appears, on the horizon. The sound of the dark water laps at the shore, dangerously close to your bare feet. The night is still, just a touch of cold on your skin, and you take careful steps down the narrow pathway. Sea water sprays over your toes, and you wish you had taken the time to get boots before you made your way here.
She is in front of you, enormous, towering, looming. You reach out. The black stone of her walls is rough underneath your fingertips, and yet there is a vibration to her, a pale vestige of deepened life, something that rumbles underneath your feet and only exists in the thinning air between you.
You step forward, entryway engulfing you. The door is square, complex mechanisms at its joints, and you bend down and pull the lever.
Clicking, clicking. As if the prison is thinking, before the door opens.
It does not open.
You pull the lever again, and again you hear the clicking, the shifting, the turning of gears and whirring of redstone inside her. And yet the door does not open.
“Why?” you ask, hoarse voice echoing off the walls. “Why won’t you open for me? I want – ” And this is the strangest part, the desire that engulfs you, the pure want that courses through you like burning, how badly you want to be inside her. “I want to know.”
My depths are not meant for you, darling.
Your knees buckle and you fall to the ground. It is not so much a voice as it is a knowledge, a knowledge engrained in your mind, as if you always knew and always would know.
“Who – what – ”
But you already know.
They call me Pandora’s Vault.
And the name, like hot, sweet, blood on your tongue, the violence and the sweat and the tears that went into the building of her intricacies, the passion and affection of her creator. Pandora’s Vault. You taste her name, on your lips. “Open for me.”
I will not, sweet one. I am built to imprison. I am made for an unending cycle of torture. It is bad enough you were drawn to me; I will not open for you.
Night after sleepless night, you visit her, and you receive the same answer. I will not open for you. You sit at the feet of her entrance and tell her stories, ask her riddles. She does not seem to understand jokes, or sarcasm; her world is limited to the sky and the earth and the ocean.
The man went to the dentist at… two thirty?
“It’s a play on what 2:30 sounds like,” you explain helplessly. “Tooth-hurt – never mind.”
I do not possess a mind.
This intrigues you. “What do you mean?”
I do not possess a mind. To have a mind, you must first be in possession of a brain. I do not have a central nervous system, and thus do not have a brain.
“Can’t your redstone be counted as nerves?”
Redstone is my blood. Mechanics are my muscles. My walls are my skin. I do not have a great many bodily functions.
“How do you think, then? How do you know words? Without a brain?”
I do not know. Perhaps I am Galatea and my creator Pygmalion, the one who you said loved his sculpture so. The one who begged for the goddess to breathe life into her. Perhaps something far more mortal happened to me and maybe the redstone is what gives me thought. Where is the line, then, between ore and life?
“Does Sam know? Can he… speak to you? Like I do?”
No.
The answer sends something fluttering in your chest, through the hollow bones of your breast.
He cannot hear me. He could never hear me. From the moment you stepped into this world, I felt your presence like I never felt his. Even as he crafted me, painstakingly, as I slowly gained consciousness and awareness, he could never hear my pleas. I was lonely.
“You’re not lonely now,” you say, and something thrums through your veins.
No, she says. I am not.
Time wastes away. It becomes meaningless, and you begin to understand her existence, as the world passes by her, the water eroding the shoreline, the trees growing in slow motion. Day after day, you are by her side, asking her the same question, begging her, and day after day she denies you. Others notice; they ask you what you need, what bothers you, and you tell them nothing of what you desire, the only thing that eats away at your ever-rotting soul. Let me inside, you scream to the heavens, voiceless. Let me know her!
She senses it in you. She is desperate for you to let it go, before it swallows you whole, before it eats away at you fully, like the maggots do to the swollen, fleshy bodies of animals killed by mobs in the night. You, listless, rest against her walls and drag your fingers up and down the rough surface, the pool of her immeasurable voice a comfort to your weary bones.
Please, she says. Please. Let me go. You cannot enter me, you cannot know me! It would destroy you.
“Destroy me,” you groan, hand fisting in the grass underneath you. “Please. I’m asking you to destroy me.”
“Why destroy you?”
You jump up as a voice – one of soundwaves that bounce off of structure – appears.
Green. The too-wide smile, the unblinking eyes. “Dream,” you say. “Sorry, I – ”
“You talk to her,” he says, and you relax a little.
“I do.”
“I’ve heard about it.” He sits on the ground next to you, and Pandora’s Vault recoils, in a way, the ever-present hum of her vibrance suddenly muted. “What does she speak of? I’m curious.”
You shrug. “The fish,” you say. “The wind. The roots in the ground.”
Dream hums. “Very poetic. But she won’t let you in.”
“No.” You tug at the grass. “No, she says it’s too dangerous.”
“It’s not too dangerous. I can open the door for you.”
NO!
He can open the door for you. All you ever wanted – the only thing you ever wanted, and he offers it to you. And the panic of Pandora’s Vault, the acuteness of her sudden cry, makes you hesitate. You hesitate for her.
“It’s not that dangerous,” Dream says. “I’ll give you a tour and everything.”
DON’T! Don’t accept! PLEASE don’t accept.
“I accept,” you say. “I’ve been wanting to look inside for ages.”
You stand, and the feeling infusing you is the excitement of a thousand days of wanting and never having, and finally, finally, you are going to get what you’ve been seeking this whole time.
Dream waltzes towards the door, and his smile splits his face, his teeth sharp and glinting behind the thin lips. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
He pulls the lever, and you hear the clicking, the whirring. And the door does not open.
Her triumph. Her pride. Her impenetrable walls have done their duty, done their work. She gleams with it. She will not open.
Dream bares his teeth, and the smile no longer looks like a smile. He pulls the lever again, with more force, and the door clicks, and clicks, and clicks, and stays closed.
I will not let you in.
Dream backs away and goes running down the path, faster than you think he can run. You slump against the walls, exhausted again.
You ask this of me, and you force me to go against the will of my commissioner. You know where he goes. You know who he seeks.
“I don’t.” As soon as the words leave your lips, you realize you do.
Sam is tall, thin, sea-green and ribbed with years of work. His welder’s helmet is pulled up over his eyes, armor gleaming. “You want me to do what?”
“Her doors won’t open,” Dream says. “There has to be a problem with the mechanism.”
“There’s not,” Sam responds. He leans on her walls and the happiness she feels is unparalleled. My creator. “I was just inside the other day, working on – ” He glances at you. “Well. Working. There’s nothing wrong with the doors.”
“Open them, then.” Dream gestures. “Open them.”
No, the prison pleads, her joy at Sam gone. Please, do not make me choose. Please do not make me choose.
“Okay,” Sam says carefully, and pulls the lever.
I’m sorry, Pandora’s Vault sobs. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
The doors stay closed.
Sam frowns. “That’s weird. It must be a problem with…” He peers at the door, begins peeling away the steel frames that bind it together. Welder’s helmet goes down.
And the pain that bursts through you. You fall to your knees and you scream out in unison, together, begging for the pain to end, the betrayal of your creator, the very hands that built you now tearing you apart, when there is nothing wrong with you, when you were just doing your job.
Sam stops. His welder’s helmet is up and the door has already suffered, panels pulled away at the corners, redstone gleaming inside. He drops to his knees in front of you. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Dream looks pointedly at you. “Are you going to explain?”
You hesitate.
“If not, I’ll tell him for you.”
Sam looks between the two of you.
You stand, and do not say anything. You walk to the lever and you wrap your fingers around it, the metal cool underneath your hands.
“Please,” you say to her. “They will only hurt you more. Just let me in.”
You will wither away if you enter my halls. You will perish. There is no way out.
“But we’ll be together.” You close your eyes and the vast expanse of her surrounds you like you are the center of the universe, of her world. “We can be together. Forever.”
I would not have you live a half-life like mine.
“They will hurt you if you do not. And they will eventually find a way to open you. You do not have a choice.”
You do not move the lever.
Her doors open.
You stand and turn to look at Sam and Dream. There is a gleam in Dream’s fathomless eyes, but Sam looks at you in wonder and astonishment.
“She does have a mind.”
You nod. “She loves you.”
His face shutters. “She loves you more.”
You turn, and step through the doorway, into the darkness of Pandora’s Vault. Behind you, untouched, the door clicks shut.