User blog:Edwin Shade/Forever Endeavor Continued

[Note: Please read Forever Endeavor if you have not already. This will make the following continuation easier to understand.]

Still Bentley never lost the hope that one day, albeit an extremely far away day, he would be freed from this life of making counters and resume a hopefully normal life. It had only been several hundred years, but it felt far more to him. It was of interest though that the millions and billions marks seemed to pass by quicker the longer he put the counters on the fourth counter, as each day seemed shorter in relation to the days he had already lived.

One day however, when the fourth counter was nearing a hundred billion Bentley realized something he should have realized a long time ago, something that changed his outlook on the situation he had been in for the last eleven millennia. It was a thought that occurred to him as he contemplated what life must be like on the outside, as he glanced every so often at the window that had become all too familiar to him. While others wished that they might live but a few years longer, he had been granted the chance to live an astronomically long time, so long in fact he may as well regard it as endless ! If he were to put off enjoying himself for the sake of the distant release and few decades he would have of normal life, then he would be wasting the vast amount of time he had already been given in which much more could be accomplished.

So from that day forth Bentley made a resolve to always discover something new about his environment, and not let a day go by in which there was an unexplored aspect of his confines with Compadre. Thinking back to the hallway of echoes incident Bentley laughed to himself. What was he thinking wading in dirty water ? He would no longer be content to stop when he had discovered something like the pool. but would always be searching for more.

It was with this thought in mind that Bentley once more began creating a second hall of echoes, which would be completed in a little over two decades. The trick was to pick away at the wall as quickly as possible with a spoon Bentley stole from the food tray, and yet give no indication that anything unusual had taken place. Over the years Compadre had been more open to conversation, and was starting to eye Bentley more when he wandered towards the window of the room, as if knowing he was thinking about escaping. Despite this, Compadre never seemed tired of his lot in life, and began thumping the table authoritatively whenever Bentley slowed down or went to fast in putting on counters. Ah well, Bentley thought, 'as long as Compadre does not seal up this tunnel like the last I am satisfied.'

The work on the tunnel continued, with progress being made quicker than ever thanks to Bentley's resourcefulness. By wresting a water pipe that appeared to have no water running through it from inside the wall he had a more effective implement than a mere spoon in making the tunnel, which had grown by now to a length of about 12 feet, almost the length of the original. A major difference between this tunnel and the prior one was that Bentley had increased the height of the tunnel until it he could stoop in it, which increased his leverage with the blunt water pipe and allowed progress to be made at such a fast rate that Bentley surmised he would be done in just a year, let alone twenty years !

[...to be continued...]