An OCD Nightmare

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 117280

There are many doors before Fred, of varying colors and with varying etched descriptions. One door is blue with no description and is leaking water out of the cracks. Another is white and featureless. A third door is oozing blood from underneath, but the door itself is green in color. Yet another door is white with blue trimmings and has very ornate white frilly patterns, with a gold doorknob and a plaque reading "One who goes in, One who goes out, One who stays, One who leaves. None who survive except the King."

One door is green and has a sticky note on it saying "doN t eNtr wat wannt t too kIll yo?"

Yeah, thought Lord Fred. Not going through that one. On second thought, though, it might all be a ruse.....the doors' designs might have nothing to do with their contents. Either way, Fred wanted to deliberate for a while and not be too hasty in deciding which door to take. In the meantime, Fred checked out hundreds of other doors in the infinite hallway and he came upon a taller-than-average, iron door on fire. Flames continuously spewed off of the metal surface and through the cracks, though without melting or burning the door in any visible way.

Curious design, thought Fred. He vaguely recalled seeing something like this earlier in his quest....or did he? Now he couldn't remember. This place had a slight drowsy effect on him as his vision blurred in and out. Fred slapped himself. This was no time to be dosing off. Fred returned to his original spot and backed up to see many of the doors at once. Now, which one to choose? thought Fred. Just as he was about to decide, he thought better of it. Ahh, not yet, not yet. Cannot be hasty about these things. There are better options.....there must be!

Fred lowered himself to the pristine floor of changing hues, and pulled out some handy charcoal from the firepit he had gathered for just such an occasion. He began drawing schematics and grading the doors A-Z, along with a complicated regular number set that accompanied each grade to determine the doors relative dimensions. Drat! thought Fred. His lines weren't that straight. He couldn't make the graph work this way! He then moved to another part of the floor and started over. This time, he listed all the doors he had seen (as he could remember them), and started making a very similar graph to the previous one which he had messed up, this time listing relative probabilities of dead end doors. Unfortunately for Fred, he fell asleep in the middle of putting the finishing touches on his second creation.

Fred awoke with a start. Everything was completely dark. He slapped himself to wake himself up as much as to affirm his reality in this darkness, and as he did so the lights turned back on. Oh, that was strange, Fred thought. He looked up at the ceiling and noticed the entirety of the ceiling was emitting a soft white glow. How curious, thought Fred. He had never seen glowing solid material before, and never this bright. After marveling at the ceiling for about 13 minutes, Fred remembered what he was doing. He looked down only to find, to his disappointment, that he had smudged all his writing when he fell down. Fiddlesticks! Well, back to the drawing board, Fred thought begrudgingly. He picked up his charcoal and moved to another spot on the floor. This time, he began drawing up all the doors....damn! He couldn't remember them now. Fred got up, walked by the doors for a hundred in each direction, spending about a minute at each door to memorize it, and then, after almost four hours of looking at doors, he at last finished and returned to his original position. "Where's my charcoal?!" Fred asked aloud. "I was sure I left it here..."

After about an hour of searching, starting with the immediate area and working his way outward, Fred finally found his lost charcoal, a hundred doors down. "Damn it all! There you are," Fred said aloud. How unfortunate he was to have lost the damn thing all the way over here! Fred put it back in his pocket only to find five other charcoal pieces stuffed in there.

Fred laughed at that and patted his full pocket affectionately; and really, he didn't feel all that sorry. He knew he would've had to find the lost bit of charcoal regardless. He can't be making a mess in this place and add to that, he needed all his charcoal pieces just in case. Fred returned to his original position at the messed-up schematics. Fred took a piece of charcoal and began drawing up new schematics on a new patch of floor....except his nose started dripping blood on his drawings, messing them up again. Fred paused and took care of his nosebleed for about ten minutes, pressing it with his handkerchief to stop the bleeding. Eventually, it did stop, and he moved to a new patch of floor to start over with his decision-making process.

Over the course of 46 hours and having started over an additional fourteen times because he couldn't get his damned lines straight, Fred finally orchestrated a grand sweeping chart of all the doors within a hundred doors in each direction, each graded according to probability of being ultimate dead ends and with the danger-level shrewdly guessed at for each door. The Y-axis of the chart was the probability of success (defined as a "happy ending") of each door, and the X-axis comprised of the estimated length of time it would take to complete each door's story. Each drawn door was of 1:15 scale according to the actual physical dimensions of each door, and under each one in the chart was a probability of dead-ends or death-ends, as well as a grading of the relative danger-levels each door would entail. On his right, another chart contained the most likely doors to bring Fred riches or success in some way along with the corresponding probabilities, as well as an opposite chart of doors that had nothing to do with his new quest. There was a short list of doors which dealt with slaying the dragon Minestus as well. Throughout the charts, there were numerous footnotes along with a bibliography off to the left, which both recorded the messages and features of each door, as well as citing outside sources. He had drawn up an index of frequently used words off to the left as well, along with a Table of Contents of the entire spread of charts (including the smudged ones, just to be safe).

Now, Fred was finally ready to choose. Fred chooses....

  1. The Blue-Water leaking Door
  2. The White-featureless Door
  3. The Green Door oozing Blood (the "Bloodstone" Door)
  4. The Ornate White-Blue Door with Golden Doorknob and Ominous Plaque
  5. The Green Door with the Frankly Idiotic Paper taped to It
  6. The Iron Flaming Door
  7. The Pitch Black Door (Blacker than anything he's ever seen)

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