I couldn’t help myself. My skin itched with excitement, and unable to resist their needs my legs sprung into a sprint. But something very… very interesting occurred. I suddenly realized how quickly I was arriving at the fork, and before I really knew it, a split in the path left a gaping hole in front of me, cutting me off from the fork. Stopping my legs as fast as I could, I teetered on the edge of what looked like a water slide made of stone, slipping down into the Earth. With no ability to make the jump across… I dropped down.

Landing somewhat gracefully as the slide spat me out, I found that I was directly below the fork, at another fork in its stead. Yet instead of green, leafy walls and crisp blue sky, my world was now anew. It was cold. It was steel. It looked very modern. Small lights of different colors shimmered on and off amidst importantly-looking control panels around the walls. The ceiling was a cold gunmetal grey, and the floor was a lighter color. It was metallic and shiny from the reflections of the runner lights that ran along the tops of all the walls. They put everything in a soft, whitish-blue glow.

I looked down and realized that my clothes had changed too. Unlike my original outfit of jeans, boots, and a fall jacket, I was in some sort of space-aged costume. It almost looked nu-military. I checked my self out briefly, but moved on to assessing the choice at hand.

Standing at the fork, I deliberated between the two identical paths, finally settling on right, and took a step in that direction. Immediately, a loud whirring sound stopping me, the fork walls were pulled mechanically into the floor. There was now no choice, I was left with a large, wide room. I strolled to the middle and looked out to see doors. Dozens of them. Stretching entirely from one peripheral to the other. Yet another whirring noise broke the cold silence, opening a hatch in the ceiling, and an old man was lowered to my side. His wrinkled brow and slight hunch marked his age, but the focus of his eyes and tight jaw told me otherwise. This man knew much.

“Who are you?”

“Did you like the costume change?”

“You got my size right.”

“Of course we did.”

“That’s funny.”

“Tell me, why did you go ‘right’ back there?”

“What”

“You were about to make the choice to go to the right, as opposed to your left. How come?”

“To be honest, I really had no clu– wait, what? Who are you? You never answered my question.”

“What about now? How would you make this choice?”

“My maze. My rules. Now answer me, who are you?”

“Call me Louis.”

“Fine. Louis. Umm… I really don’t know. I have no choices to make as I have no positives or negatives to weigh. How on earth can I make a choice between hundreds of doors?”

“Well, you made the choice before to go to the right, correct? Just do that again.”

“But that was between two options! Not THIS many.”

“I’ll pose to you that you had more than two options just now.”

“…how?”

“Well, consider it. You could have turned around before the sinkhole. You could have tried to jump across incessantly, and perhaps made it. You could have sat on the ground and sang Christmas tunes at the top of your lungs. You could have played hopscotch with yourself and named as many baseball players as you could think of while slowly flapping your arms, with one eye opened and–”

“Alright. I get it.”

“I’m not trying to point out the absurd, I’m simply giving you direction.”

“Direction?”

“Of what the right door is. For once you truly acknowledge all of your options, all of them, the choice becomes abundantly clear. Look on.”

I turned and saw that the doors were shaking. They suddenly collapsed together like a dealer’s deck, and I was left with only 5 doors. Louis looked pleased.

“Fascinating, yes?”

“I don’t feel any different… and yet I do. You’ve told me nothing new. How has my mind changed so much?”

“My friend, it hasn’t. You’re simply using knowledge about the world, choices, and so forth, that you already had. Unlocking it. Tapping it for use. What’s that down there?”

I looked at my feet to see… my feet, and looked up to see no more Louis.

Walking cautiously toward them, I stopped before the 5 doors. Upon them were numbers and letters all about. They all looked equally perplexing, and I began to realize that it was my clouded mind that had made them so. The choice was clear. I just needed to see it.

I sat on the ground and thought. Like so many lost watches, forgotten trivia, and choices in life, I knew it would hit me as soon as it was no longer in the center of my mind.