Order of Magnitude

X. The Long and Winding Tunnel

      "I can't see a thing," Scarlet complained as she bumped into yet another parv. "This is awful."

      "Better than it was up there, honey," Miller said from somewhere in the dark.

      "Honey?" Scarlet hissed. "If I find you, I'm going to smack you upside the head."

      "Good luck on that."

      There was the sound of a slap in the inky blackness. "Ow," Turner exclaimed.

      "Okay everybody, let's keep it together," Jacques said. "We have no idea where we are or where we're going. We need to keep our wits about us. There are probably insects in here, and we don't have the advantage of sight."

      Just then, the tunnel was bathed in a yellow glow. The group looked around and saw Jean with a lit match in his hand.

      "Where did you get that?" his brother asked him.

      "It was hanging on the wall," he said. "Look, there are a bunch of them."

      Jean was right. There were matches lining the walls of the tunnel and used matches lying at their feet. They littered the ground of the shaft, which seemed to stretch on forever.

      "Whoever built this tunnel must have needed the light while they were digging," Jacques explained. "That means at the end of this thing we'll find more parvs who can help us. Grab as many matches as you can; they're not going to stay lit for long, and we need to be able to see where we're going."

      The parvs filled their arms with as many matchsticks as they could manage and continued on their journey. Miller fell in line next to Edison as they went forward.

      "How are you holding up, buddy?" he asked conversationally. There was no response, so Miller tried pressing him a bit more. "I like the hairdo. Blue. That's... neat."

      "Oh, stop," Scarlet said from behind him. "I haven't heard a peep from him since we came into this tunnel."

      "I'm just trying to find out how my main man's feeling after being held prisoner for so long."

      "He'll talk when he's ready to talk," Scarlet said. "Oh, and I almost forgot..." She shifted her pile of matches into one arm and playfully smacked Miller with her free hand.

      "Hey, cut that out," he said. "Turner already took one for me."

      "Quiet, guys," Jacques said from ahead. "Take a look at this." He waved his torch around ahead of him. The whole tunnel system split off into half a dozen different shafts that led in various directions.

      "Oh, great," Scarlet complained. "Now which way do we go?"

      "That's a good question," Turner said. "Whatever happens, we don't want to be split up again."

      "I guess we'll have to make a decision, then," Jean turned to his brother. "What do you think?"

      Jacques eyed each shaft carefully. They all looked the same to him. He waited and waited, weighing the options of each choice meticulously, until his torch went out. Then he waited for a half a second more. "I've got it," he said quite suddenly in the dark, then lit another match. "We go that way, to the upper left."

      "How do you know?" Turner asked.

      "Because there is light down that shaft," he said, and moved down the tunnel. The rest of the group followed obediently.

      The parvs came to a stop when they encountered lit torches along the walls and a dead ant at their feet. There were sharp pieces of metal sticking out of it, but no trace of whoever killed it.

      "Keep your eyes open, guys," Jacques said worriedly. "We're not alone right now."

     Sure enough, as soon as he spoke those words, a scream rose from the back of the group. A battalion of parvs were advancing on them with long, sharp pins in their hands. Jacques rushed forward and was greeted by another battalion in front of him. He put his hands in the air in surrender. "Hey," he began conversationally. "I'm glad we found you..."

      "Silence," the commander said. "We heard you in Tunnel A. It's been a while since that tunnel has been used. Quite surprising, indeed." The tiny man's face twitched, halfway between a smile and a snarl. "We're taking you to SubTerra. Chandra will know what to do with you." And with that, the two battalions led the group of escaped parvs down the tunnel and toward the terrifying unknown.