Chapter 16 — The Red Grid

A vibration struck Alex from below, and a sharp white light slashed across his face before he could even realize where he was. The hum came from everywhere at once—the walls, the floor, and the metal trusses overhead—and the air trembled in his lung. He jerked, shielding his eyes with his palm, and only then realized: his body was intact, his chest didn't ache, his ribs weren't crunching under the weight, and yesterday's pain had vanished along with the beam that had pinned him to the wet stone. Alex rose to one knee, struggling to maintain his balance, and saw a corridor of corrugated metal around him. The fourth world. A truck in the first, a stiletto in the second, a wooden beam in the third—three deaths, each more mundane than the last. Not an epic saga of dragons and princesses, but a chain of absurdities worthy of an office report marked "human error."

He ran a hand over his clothes. His office jacket had survived the first hit and the second, though dark stains and a neat tear remained on the fabric. Over it hung the prickly woolen shirt from the third world; ragged claw marks darkened the shoulder and sleeve, and the fabric on his chest was crushed and matted from the impact of the beam. His body returned clean every time, but the clothes stubbornly retained the "memory." Alex traced the damage with his fingers and gave a crooked smile: his outfits died with him, but they didn't have time to complain.

He checked his pockets. His phone was gone—it had stayed in the first world, along with his former life and all the maps that now meant nothing. The emptiness beneath his fingers triggered a familiar irritation, almost like an office one: opening a task only to find the necessary file was missing, and still pretending the deadline wasn't urgent. Alex straightened up and forced himself not to think about how easily his body had become whole again. Three deaths. He counted them in his head once more, no longer as a joke, but as a working mark. Fourth world, fourth attempt to understand the rules.

The terminal was empty. The corridor stretched between smooth metal panels, long lights flickered overhead, and yellow and red stripes alternated on the floor. The air smelled of machine oil, dust, and something chemical that tickled his throat. Mechanisms worked behind the walls: engines rotated with a dull thrum, rollers clattered somewhere, and occasionally a long vibration, like distant thunder, rippled through the metal. No forest, no palisade, no human speech. Only an industrial night in which everything continued to function without a human.

On the nearest panel, the digits 03:12 glowed. Alex touched the glass with his finger, leaving a clean arc in the dust. The time was familiar, but this similarity guaranteed nothing. Nearby were pictograms: a yellow triangle, the silhouette of a falling load, an arrow, and a crossed-out circle. He understood the yellow sign without effort—caution, danger, do not put your hands where they might be crushed. Such signs were found in any world where people believed themselves smarter than mechanisms. But beneath his feet lay a red grid. Thin lines formed a neat rectangle across the corridor and extended further toward a cargo platform. Alex crouched, touched the paint, and felt a faint warmth emanating from below.

The color red was contradictory in his memory. Sometimes it meant a prohibition, sometimes a place to stop and wait for permission. The grid looked too neat to be accidental and too wide to serve as a simple prohibition line. Alex walked around it by the edge, looked at the empty passage behind him, and then back at the platform ahead. The signs indicated that order existed here. The problem was that order is not obligated to be understandable to someone encountering it for the first time.

He stood at the edge of the marking, not daring to move forward immediately. A small green indicator blinked on the wall; beside it were two unlabeled buttons and a narrow window where dots raced. The system was clearly communicating with the workers, but it did so through light, color, and short signals. Alex tried to catch the sequence: two bursts, a pause, one burst. Then a repeat. He memorized it almost mechanically, just as he once memorized the order of operations in a spreadsheet before a meeting. If he could understand the rhythm, he could at least distinguish a warning from normal operation. But the terminal was in no hurry to explain itself, and as usual, no one had provided time for training.

A worker in a gray uniform, safety goggles, and a yellow hard hat emerged from a side passage. A radio hung from his belt, and he held a tablet in his hand. The man noticed Alex, stopped abruptly, and raised a palm. Then he shouted a few words—sharp, clipped, with a metallic ring. To Alex, it was only a stream of unfamiliar sounds mixed with the hum of the terminal. He raised his hands to show he was unarmed, then pointed to himself and the corridor, as if asking where to go.

The worker frowned, waved his hand toward the exit, and pointed again at the red grid. His speech grew louder, but not any clearer. Alex shook his head, touched his ear, and spread his palms. The man exhaled in irritation, pointed first at the platform, then at a clear section of the floor, and walked quickly toward the panel. Alex caught not the words, but the sequence of movements: get out, don't interfere, watch the machinery. This, it seemed to him, should be enough.

The cargo platform appeared at the end of the corridor almost silently. It was flat and heavy, with metal containers secured by straps. The wheels moved along guides, hydraulics hissed, and a steady vibration ran beneath the decking. The platform stopped right in front of the red grid. The worker turned and waved again toward where the lines crossed the floor. The gesture could be interpreted any way: stand here, move over there, watch your step, don't block the way. Alex chose the most familiar option.

In his world, red markings often designated a waiting area. In warehouses and construction sites, people stood in the designated rectangle when machinery passed nearby. The worker had pointed exactly there. The logic seemed simple: the platform stopped, the man pointed to the grid, meaning it was a safe zone where one should wait. Alex even felt a brief sense of satisfaction. After the wagon and the sacks, he had once again applied a common skill—look at the chaos, find the pattern, choose the workstation. Not heroism, but optimization.

He stepped onto the red lines. The concrete beneath his soles felt warm and sprang slightly. The vibration intensified, but Alex took it as a sign of operating equipment that was about to move nearby. He stood closer to the center of the grid, put his hands in his pockets, and looked at the yellow triangle. Everything looked convincing. In a foreign world, he had finally found at least one familiar principle: danger is marked, and people show you where to stand.

The platform jerked.

First, the first container shifted. Its metal side crawled right across the red grid, slowly and without warning. Alex managed to jump back, felt a gust of air hit his face, and saw that the lines on the floor did not surround a safe spot. They designated a path of movement. His other foot slipped on condensate and fell into a narrow guide. The slot caught his sole, his ankle twisted, and Alex crashed onto his side, clutching the edge of the platform with his fingers.

He tried to pull his leg out. The mechanism did not stop. First came the pressure—dull, impersonal, like a heavy wardrobe pinning fingers between a wall and a door. Then came the crunch. Pain surged up his shin, seized his thigh, and forced him to squeeze his eyes shut. The second container advanced, the rollers spun with identical precision, as if neither panic, nor a human, nor any reason to change the program existed inside the machine. Alex screamed, but his voice was drowned out by the hum.

The worker rushed toward him. Alex saw his face behind the safety goggles, his open mouth, and the sharp movements of his hands. The man was shouting something, but the words remained noise. He tried to reach the emergency lever, but the platform continued to move. Alex realized only one thing: he had been noticed too late. A familiar sign, a foreign gesture, and his own confidence had combined into one simple mistake.

The metal pressed him against the edge of the panel. The air left his lungs, and the taste of blood appeared in his mouth. The power of the transitions did not awaken; no great threat came to his aid or explained the local rules. The fourth death turned out to be the most mundane: the automatic platform continued to perform its job, and Alex happened to be where it was supposed to pass.

In the final seconds, he looked at the red grid blurring before his eyes. He finally saw the difference between a sign and its meaning. Color, line, and gesture did not exist separately: their meaning was determined by the entire order of the terminal—the direction of the rollers, the position of the platform, the clear passage, the tension of the worker. Alex had tried to read individual symbols because individual symbols reminded him of his former world. But a foreign system required a different perspective.

He died not from a lack of words. He didn't know the words at all. He died from the certainty that a familiar form necessarily leads to a familiar conclusion. The hum grew lower, the red lines merged into a single stripe, and the world collapsed before the worker could pull him out of the guide.