Excerpt: The Tulin-Walker Travel Agency

“What is this place?” Benedict asked, his eyes fixed squarely on the impressive building in front of them. At the top of a set of stone stairs was a building that looked to be equal parts ancient temple, homey cabin, and modern architecture at its finest.
“The Author’s Museum of Marvels,” Linae said, her voice catching in her throat. The very site of it filled her with a sense of wonder and optimism.
“That doesn’t look very practical,” Lynne pointed out.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Linae said, starting up the stairs. There were more of them than there appeared to be.
“And why are we here?” Benedict asked, following her up the stairs. “I mean, it looks awesome, but not like something we had to rush over to see.”
While they climbed, Linae and Lynne explained about why they were there and what they hoped to find. Benedict, like Lynne, was slightly skeptical, but unlike Lynne, he was excited to see what there was, anyway. After all, if the courtyard was any indication, then what was inside was sure to be interesting, even if it wasn’t entirely amazing.
“How long do these stairs go?” Lynne wondered after a while. “It feels like we’ve been climbing for a long time.”
“It can’t have been that long,” Linae said, “We haven’t gone that far yet.” She pointed to the distance behind them, which did indeed seem very small.
“Look, there’s a sign,” Benedict said, running over to a little plaque mounted on the stair railing. “Stairs of Infinite Climbing,” he read.
Linae and Lynne also went over to where the plaque was and read along with him. “These stairs hold a powerful charm that prevents those who climb them to ever reach the top. In the same way, once they begin climbing, they will no longer be able to reach the bottom.”
“What?!” Linae felt all her optimism draining out of her feet, like she was standing in a puddle of pure defeat. “So we’re trapped here?”
“Maybe we can still go down,” Lynne said, and started to take the stairs in the opposite direction. Linae and Benedict watched her going down a few steps, but soon all they saw was her seeming to walk down the same two steps over and over again.
“Lynne, cut that out, you’re not getting anywhere,” Linae told her. She sat down on the steps and cupped her chin in her hands, her elbows resting on her knees.
“Are we stuck here now?” Benedict asked, sitting down next to her.
“Maybe,” she replied.
“Who would build stairs that trap the users?” Lynne wondered.
“Any number of people,” Linae replied. She had been thinking about that same kind of thing herself. “People who don’t want anyone to visit them.”
“Someone who doesn’t like traveling salesmen,” Benedict said. That was the only reason he could think of.
“I wonder why this wasn’t mentioned on the wiki page,” Linae said, trying to rack her brain to remember if it had been mentioned and she just hadn’t seen it, although she didn’t know how that was really possible, with all the times she’d read the article and its accompanying pages.
“So if we go up, we keep going up without reaching the top, and if we go down, we keep going down without reaching the bottom,” Lynne said, scratching the side of her cheek as she thought.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Linae grumbled. She couldn’t think of a better line than that, as she was trying to figure out how to get out of the trouble they were in. But there didn’t seem to be a solution.
“What if we weren’t on the stairs?” Benedict suggested, “Maybe that would help.”
“What do you mean?” Lynne and Linae asked at the same time. “All there is is stairs,” Linae added.
“Well, there’s the railing, isn‘t there? Maybe that‘s not part of the stairs and we can climb up it.” To prove his point, he tried to climb up onto the railing. Lynne and Linae had to give him a boost, but he got up there. “Now watch,” he said, and he started shimmying up the railing. At first, it looked like he was getting somewhere, but all too soon it became obvious that he was not going anywhere at all, although he was still going through the motions. He looked back to see how far he had gone, and was shocked to see Linae and Lynne standing just a few feet from him. “Aw man, I’m right where I started.”
“Sure looked funny, though,” Linae commented. Lynne didn’t say anything at all.
“I don’t get this place,” Benedict complained. “If it’s a museum, how are people supposed to get there if they get stuck on the stairs?”
“Maybe it’s a test,” Linae said. “You only get the see the exhibits if you’re smart enough to figure out how to get off the stairs.”
“Or not stupid enough to get on them in the first place,” Benedict added.
“What was that?” Linae said, giving him a sidelong glance.
“Nothing,” Benedict said innocently. He was out of ideas.
“So, if we think we’re getting somewhere when we go up, and think we’re getting somewhere when we go down,” Lynne continued her thought process from before, “then we aren’t going very far at all.”
“Yes, I think we’ve established that pretty well,” Linae said.
“But when we were going up, it looked like the top was getting closer,” Lynne went on, “And when I was going down, it looked like I was getting closer to the bottom of the steps.”
“And your point is?” Linae asked, but Benedict was listening carefully. He had a feeling that Lynne was on to something, even if he had no idea what it was.
“Well, we obviously aren’t going anywhere when we try to go up or down,” Lynne pointed out.
“We aren’t going anywhere by staying here either, if that’s what your idea is,” Linae said dryly.
“No, actually,” Lynne said, “I think that we may not be very far off the ground, that’s all. Not as far as we think we are.”
Linae still looked unconvinced as she processed this information. “So you’re saying we’re closer to the bottom steps than the top steps, is that it?”
“More than close,” Lynne said, “I think we’re just going up the very bottom steps themselves.”
“And what can we do with this information, even if you’re right?” Linae asked.
“Jump!” Benedict said, “We can jump off the steps and then we’ll be free!”
“Probably,” Lynne said. While she was fairly certain of her hypothesis, she didn’t want to be the one to test it, and had secretly hoped that one of the others got it without her having to spell it out, thus saving her from testing it herself.
“All right, let’s do it!” Benedict said, and just like that, he jumped.
“Wait!” Linae called as he got up and leapt, “You don’t know how far-” for by all appearances, they were too far up to jump without getting injured. But her voice died out as she and Lynne watched Benedict appear to ripple through the air and suddenly appear at the bottom of the steps.
He waved at them. “Hey, it worked!” he called up.
“So it did,” Linae said, feeling a bit shaken, even though she hadn’t been the one to jump and had merely watched it happen.
“Oh good, it worked,” Lynne said, and then took a leap herself. Just as Benedict’s had before her, her body shimmered like the surface of a lake, and then she was suddenly at the bottom.
That just left Linae. “Well, here goes nothing,” she said, closed her eyes and jumped. She was surprised to find that the trip took less than a second. When she opened her eyes, she was off the steps and on the ground. “Well, that was anticlimactic,” she said.
“As I suspected, we were on the bottom step all along,” Lynne said, with a small smile.