I've watched you, or someone quite like you (you all look alike to me), arrive in this room so many times, and the lack of originality always bores me. I am a voyeur at heart, I suppose, and I like to watch you for a while before announcing myself, but only if you do something interesting. What you usually do is look around.

I can understand, this is a breathtaking place, and this anteroom a breathtaking room within it. I wish I could take credit for it, but I neither designed nor built this place. I merely oversee it, and use it for my own purposes.

The room is huge, by your standards, the ceiling is high above you and is a work of art unto itself, a painting of gods and demons cavorting. Graceful columns shoulder the weight of the place, arches flying off in every directions. The floor is marble, cool and cracked, obviously very old, a checkered pattern of blue and white squares. Older, even, than I. Several wonderful pieces of furniture fill the space; a divan, with a purple cushion of velvet, a small table off against one wall, a huge, framed mirror, several exquisite vases of antique origin. I notice with irritation that someone has moved a coatrack against the right wall of the room again, thinking to be more welcoming. No matter how often I remove their additions, they are unfazed.

There are three doors from this room, each more or less identical. Big oak doors framed by white columns, with huge, brass handles. One is directly before you, one each on your left and right. This usually makes you think, and you whirl, trying to find the doorway you entered through. There is no other door. You look back at the doors around you, and I can almost hear you wondering silently if you had somehow gotten turned around, if one of these doors is the one you came in through. None of them are.

I can see you re about to steel your nerve and try one, and it is time once again for me to present myself to you, explain the rules of my peculiar game, and get this over with. Contact is what I loathe most. I prefer to watch.

I make myself visible and clear my throat. Watching your terrified reaction is most rewarding -except this time you aren't terrified. You turn slowly and regard me. I don't like that. I prefer to be the one regarding. Still, even this variation of your behavior I have seen before, if rarely, and I am more amused by this sudden burst of originality.

"Greetings," I say, by way of hello. You simply stare at me, waiting, so I get into it. "Your task is simple: find your way out. Along the way you may overtake your quarry, or he may overtake you, depending on any number of factors. If you can discover the nature of his crime, and his identity, you may even have a chance at escape." My mouth, unbidden, forms a smile at this half-lie. While strictly true no one has managed it yet.

You still make no reply. "Choose a door," I continue, bored now with details, "and go into the room it leads to, if any. There is a way out, and the maze is finite, I assure you. There are clues...if you can see them. Sometimes you will be able to retrace your steps, sometimes not. Sometimes I will be with you, sometimes not. Sometimes, I will answer questions. Sometimes," I smile, "not. What you would do best to remember is that you are a pawn in my game. There is no escape but a fair one, so please....choose wisely."

There are no questions now, so I allow myself to be hidden again, and watch as you search the room thoroughly. For me? For clues? How literal minded you are! As if the solid objects in this room might be signposts....although they may be, in a sense. Then you pause for a moment of contemplation, wondering, I suppose, why you have been chosen. So arrogant, as if I chose you especially. Any of you would have done just as well, perhaps better. That remains to be seen.

After a while, you obviously realize that a decision must be made, and you make your exit, to...