Abba’s Apartment is a Puzzle Lock

Abba’s apartment is a puzzle-lock. If he could solve it, he could save his world.

There were three rooms in Abba’s apartment.

The first room was Abba’s bedroom. It was just big enough for a sleeping mat to stretch out and touch all four walls. Sometimes Abba’s wife could also be found in the bedroom. At least, Abba thought of her as his wife. He had never known anything different, which included being inside the apartment. 

The Time Room contained a simple woven rug on the floor. It was also the cat’s room. The room was a perfect two metre square. The rug was round. The cat was just a cat, as far as Abba knew. A golden tabby.

The third room was a kind of kitchen. It contained a window with a roller shutter you could pull up or down with a handle, a hatch or hole in the wall, also with a shutter with a handle, a still, and a plant.

There was technically a fourth room in Abba’s apartment, even if you didn’t count the space which connected the four rooms, which Abba did not, because it was neither here nor there, just in between. 

The fourth room was the Portal Room. But it was wrong.

These four rooms formed the puzzle, and the lock, of Abba’s life. They were separate, each requiring their own specific touch, and yet connected to the greater challenge. 

So everyday was consistent for Abba as he tried to solve this dilemma. 

First he would awake in the bedroom, where his wife would berate him.

“Why haven’t you solved this yet, Abba? Your head is fat and lazy.”

She was a squat woman with a dump of black hair. She was difficult to be around, and there was nowhere else to be but the apartment. When Abba grew too sick of her, he could think her gone. Then he would have peace in the apartment to himself for a few days, until she wandered back into his thoughts.

When Abba had an idea, he would go into the Time Room and jump himself forwards in time to see if his idea was correct. He would sit on the rug cross legged and close his eyes and concentrate on the feeling of time streaming past him. If the cat was in the room, Abba would lay down in a crescent moon shape around the sleeping animal and jump that way. 

None of his ideas ever proved to be correct when he reached the future, but that was okay, because he would just go and come up with another one to test.

Next Abba would check the kitchen. 

Abba could not open the shutter on the window because then the bombs that he was trying to prevent for the rest of the world would get into his apartment and ruin any chance of finding a solution.

The hole in the wall he could open. Sometimes it would contain a plate of food, sometimes not.

The still took a long time to drip a cup full, and the plant took a long time to grow. Abba spent a lot of time in the Time Room jumping himself to a point in the future when conditions were right for either. Then he could really make some progress on the problem. 

It was when he was under either of those influences that he felt he could jump himself backwards in time using the Time Room. He had never managed this before, although he felt like he’d got close on a number of occasions, and he knew, just knew, that this was somehow a key to something very big and very important. If he could just get the still and the plant to line up schedules, then maybe… but he was too impatient. 

When Abba could not think of any ideas, he would remain in the bedroom, staring at the door to the portal room. 

This door had always been shut, and remained shut. It wasn’t locked, not physically. But Abba knew, simply knew, that if he opened that door it would lead to the wrong room. So he kept it shut until he was able to make that door lead to where he needed it to go. 

Abba spent as little time in the conjoining space between rooms as possible. There just wasn’t anything there, nothing on the floor or walls, and everything just painted a dull white. It was a space you were meant to just move through on your way to a better space. 

One day Abba’s wife came to him. She was unusually pleasant. She was quiet and comfortable in her movements and her voice. She let Abba know there was food in the hatch in the kitchen, which spared him the disappointment of checking and not finding anything.

She stayed with him as he ate. She ran the fingers of one hand down the slats of the window shutter, and the palm of the other down Abba’s back, over and over again.

“Abba,” she said finally. “You’ve run out of time. We have to try again.”

Abba wished he’d remembered not to remember his wife, at that stage.

“Maybe not,” he replied. “Not if I can finally get the Time Room to go backwards. Then it won’t matter how long I’ve spent there. Even if I got back only in the last second, it won’t matter, because I’ll have all the time left in the world.”

“Or,” said his wife. “You will waste all your remaining time on a solution that ultimately doesn’t work, instead of pursuing other avenues.”

That managed to convince Abba. As much as he feared his wife, he feared being a failure even more.

So that night, Abba lay with his wife in the bedroom. Several times he tried to lift her on his hips and carry her into the Time Room so that he could jump forwards to when this was all over, and several times his wife slapped him and grabbed at his hair, pulling on it, so that he would stay in the bedroom, where it was right to do these thing, until at last she fell off Abba, exhausted.

The very next day, Abba began an intense dedication to the Time Room. He would not be moved by the knowledge of food appearing in the hatch. He would not be moved by the golden tabby, who would hiss and swipe at him when it wanted its own time in the room. 

Abba desperately wanted to go back in time to when none of this had happened. He couldn’t bear to bring a son into a world he did not himself understand.

But even at his best concentration, even with the potent doses of the still and the plant combined, Abba could not jump backwards in time.

Abba’s dedication began to fall away. He could not drag himself to the Time Room day after day and sit on the rug. 

And then a funny thing happened. Abba found that he did not have to be in the Time Room to make jumps forward in time. He could do that anywhere. He could do that from the kitchen, or from his bed. Especially from his bed. 

Still, this did not cause an idea to immediately strike Abba. Yes, it was growth. It didn’t help. 

But Abba was not sad about this. The bombs were approaching, closer now, but he did not feel pressured by that doom. 

Abba began to spend more time in the in-between space between rooms. At first this had only ever been a transition space, something to pass through. But Abba began to enjoy it more and more. There was nothing in this space, nothing on the floor or walls. There was nothing to do. No pressures. And Abba found that to be wonderful. He liked the fact that you could step into that space and be on your way to somewhere, without ever having to get there. He liked just being, without having to be doing. 

Unlike the Time Room, with its consuming focus on the past and the future, the in-between was just that. If pushed, Abba could say that the in-between space was on its way to the next now, which was also always on its way to the next, and the next. And unlike the Time Room, where Abba always and relentlessly pursued, with great focus, his way to the future, the being in the now was quite fulfilling.

Abba still spent a lot of time staring at the door to the Portal Room. He began to consider that doors have two sides, and that it was possible there was someone else on the other side of the door, in a room they didn’t want to be in, wanting to get into his in-between space where he was quite content. What did that mean for the room he was hoping to find behind the Portal door?

Abba did not manage to tell anyone of his revelations. It’s quite probably they considered him a failure, at the one task he had been given in his life. 

It’s probable people would not have listened even if Abba had managed to spread his word. His answers may not have satisfied everyone. The mysteries Abba uncovered are things people usually have to discover for themselves.

In any case, Abba had not nourished himself. He died on the day his son, another Abba, was born.

And so Abba had to start again. He had to work on the puzzle-lock of his apartment, and try and solve it to save his world.