City Maze: Unrealistic Nonsense Chapter 0

City Maze has five different maps on the front board. Each map is considered to have the correct details about City Maze’s structure. All five maps look to a certain degree similar with some obvious differences, which makes choosing the right map pretty difficult. However, there is one hint into adding you. A note written beneath the five maps that reads: “All five maps look very similar, but they are undoubtedly different. Connecting the similarities will guide you through the correct pathway towards the exit”.

“I don’t know which one to pick!” A little girl with coal-dark black hair midst a crowd of children standing in front of the maps’ board said in confusion. She slowly and unnoticeably turned her eyes leftward to the voices of a small group of children taking and discussing between themselves, assuming they chose the second map as their guide. “Probably they saw someone else picking that map and they just copied them” she said in her mind.

Because of the sentence in the note: “Connecting the similarities…” it’s easy for any grown-up to come to the fact that no map on its own is enough to complete the maze challenge. It’s actually a very simple trick to figure out after some well-thinking. Finally coming to the conclusion, that by fusing all the identical maze parts that are shared in two or more maps together, then connecting all the combined parts together according to their structure in their respective maps, and eliminating all the maze parts that didn’t participate in the conjunction, a new sixth map that contains the one and only pathway that leads from the starting point to the exit appears.

Two boys and a girl inside the maze stopped in their place after reaching the end of their path and looked left.

“We’ve been here before!” One boy exclaimed. The other two remained staring in shock.

“Different parts of the maze look similar, yes. But we’ve been here before!”

The girl from the other two turned her head and body reactively quick to the second boy and said upsettingly: “I knew we were going backwards! I knew we were going the wrong way! Because the signs on the walls were pointing at the same direction as ours!.” In order to understand the girl’s reasoning, we need to go back and revise the explanation given by the workers of City Maze to the children before the start.

One worker said during the Introduction: “In order to insure that nobody gets lost because of how massive City Maze is, signs that point out together the direction to the starting point are placed on all the walls in all parts of the maze.” Another important information given by a different worker was: “Routes and path branches were made many and close to each other to make the opposite direction of the signs being the correct way towards the exit not obvious and reliable.”

“I’m sorry Hana” the second boy apologised to his friend trying to satisfy her. “Even though you’ve told me that it was a wrong pick, I still made you two follow me just for it to backtracking us to a place that we had already encountered and beaten.”

The three kids returned back their way to where they were and came from. It was a rectangular-spaced place with two paths on its right, two on its left, one path facing them directly from the front and, of course, the path behind them that they just came by. Six in total.

The boy responsible for the wrong choosing stepped forward in front of his friends and said: “Alright. Let’s revise our situation”. He stood in front of the second path to his right and said: “This is the path that we came here by the first time. And the first path to our right, we know thanks to two out of of the five maps that we have printed on the maps’ paper that Hana is carrying and Ronny’s checking that it has a dead-end.”

“Yes. It ended on me after three turns” Ronny confirmed.

The second boy then continued: “Which leaves these two paths on our left and that one path there facing us directly from the fron…”

“No, no, no!” Hana said quickly and loudly interrupting the his talk. She looked at the boy and expressed to him apologetic facial expressions. “That path there is also facing similarly to its signs. Only one of the two paths on the left can be right” she explained herself to them calmly and very politely.

“Hana. Listen to me!” The boy replied to her saying loudly. “Have you forgotten what we were told before we started?! About the structuring of the maze?! You’re being superficial. We need to put all possibilities into consideration.”

“You do have a point” Ronny said to the boy. In a slow low tone Ronny then followed: “But still…”, in a faster higher tone he continued: “…she is…”

“He has a point?!” Hana said loudly and disapprovingly interrupting Ronny’s talk.

“I do!” The other boy replied immediately. “Hana, City Maze is considered one of the most challenging amusement park games in the country. The engineers who designed the maze would never make a section like ours this obvious to overcom…”

The boy paused all suddenly and remained silent for a second or two. He then turned his eyes towards the two paths on the left and then said in a quiet calm voice: “Now that I think about it…

Hana was already irritated by the boy. But additionally she was also very worried. Because she knew exactly what he was about to say next.

“…It’s obvious that neither of these two paths on the left can be right.” He finished his sentence in the same calm manner he started.

“Jais. What are you thinking?!” Hana snapped then also she all suddenly paused. “Wait. Am I being treated like this because I was polite before? No, no, no! Or perhaps the reason behind Jais’ behaviour is that he is acting like this out of arrogance for being wrong once?” Hana thought to herself in her mind.

To her that wasn’t a bad speculation. But she was unsure, and needed a further conforming explanation.

“Wait Jais. It’s ture that I do agree with you over Hana that no options should be rushed in disqualification. But don’t you think you’re acting irrationally?” Ronny said to Jais.

“Hana…” Jais simply pointed towards the directly facing path and stared directly at Hana in the eyes and said to her calmly: “Even though I was wrong once, and even though I have no proof…” Jais paused for a moment then continued: “…Hana, I believe that is the right way.”

Even though it was an argument, the three kids were full of energy and were doing their best to reach the end. But with time passing and the dispute growing, a negative atmosphere was developing causing their ambition and enthusiasm to crumble. In the end, the three kids gave up on reaching the end and made their way back to the starting point feeling all defeated and disappointed.

On their way, a kid ran by them from the opposite direction in a hurry, they noticed as she getting away that she was looking at what they recognised as the blank back-side of a maps’ paper similar to Hana’s in her hand. The three kids stared at the running girl with wonder thinking she was weird and said in their minds collectively: “This girl…, she’s definitely getting lost.” Finally, the three kids departed into the distance and disappeared.

Outside the exit on the other side of the maze, a reception worker responsible for receiving whoever makes it to the end saw a single girl with coal-dark black hair approaching him.

“She made it on her own?!” He exclaimed wonderingly.

“It took too long” the young girl said to herself as she stepped through exit “It took too long to get here. The time that took me to get here is just unsatisfying.”

“At the beginning of the challenge before I made it to the starting point when I was still at the front maps’ board, I felt the difficulty of City Maze. It made me remember its national reputation and it made me acknowledge it. But then seeing everyone who was around me in groups of two, four or five taking a pick of which map they chose as their guide; informing the stationary workers to receive their maps’ paper and make their way to the starting point happily and full of confidence made me develop jealousy and resource management-stress to the point of self-insecurity and feeling down.

“But after successfully cracking City Maze’s maps’ mystery I genuinely got excited. I even put a lot of effort in writing down my collection info and even drawing my own map on the back of my maps’ paper. I felt the spirit of challenge. I sprinted through the maze with the intention of making it to end first, in a new record of time…”

The girl got quiet and turned her head down to the floor, she was speaking on top of a small stage in front of a small crowd of the parents and workers. The adults of course understood the reason behind her pausing. The girl lifted her head all suddenly and said energetically: “However, I’m happy to announce that I, Cry Tarfiga, am the twenty-third out of the first twenty-five to finish New Zealand’s City Maze challenge this year.”

The audience began to clap for Cry as she finished her speech and stepped away from the microphone to the back of the stage. “It bothers me but I don’t know.” Cry thought to herself as she stood at the back of the stage with the other victors. “No. When attending a special event, like celebrating one’s victory, a proper behaviour and a grateful attitude is obligational.”

After the end of the ceremony, the previous reception worker saw Cry again from a distance and said before she disappeared into the horizon as she was walking away to leave: “What exactly is the colour of her hair?”