Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Solenoid

but in my time only traces and peels of the old paint hung on the wood rotten by time, full of insect pupas and transparent spider webs. It was always closed, not with a padlock, like you would expect, but with a code like some diplomatic briefcases. There was an iron rectangle with four equally greasy pieces (blackish lubricant made them slide in their sockets despite the rust that had almost erased the figures) that could be turned with your finger to show one figure on each face. The number that opened the lock with a clink of cams was 7129. Mikola had whispered it in my ear like a great mystery: the number was secret and should not be written down anywhere. When you opened the door,

the pitch darkness inside seemed hard and compact: where would you enter, how could you fit? You would be pushed back through the door by the force of the volume of darkness you displaced. However, you noticed, once your eyes got used to the darkness, that you can step on a small corridor, a grid suspended over the night. I remember when, my heart beating anxiously, I first entered the tower. After I closed the door the world disappeared. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t see anything, seeing itself had disappeared. I could not remember what to see meant. I closed and opened my eyes without feeling any change. The other senses had disappeared too with their related worlds, except

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