Chapter 4: The Locked Door
POV: Penny
"Kayel?" Penny knocked on the door to 4B, balancing a plate of leftover Chinese takeout in her other hand. "Are you in there?"
Silence.
She knocked again, harder this time. "Kayel? I brought you some lo mein. You know, as a thank you for taking on the website project."
Still nothing.
Penny pressed her ear to the door, listening for any sound of movement inside. Had she heard wrong yesterday? Maybe he'd said he was going out of town for the project. But no, she was pretty sure he'd said he could start right away.
The door to 4A opened, and Leonard poked his head out. "Everything okay?"
"I don't think Kayel's answering his door," Penny said. "I've been knocking for like five minutes."
Leonard stepped into the hallway, followed by Sheldon, who was carrying what appeared to be a homemade sonic measuring device.
"Perhaps he's not home," Sheldon suggested. "The absence of auditory response would support that hypothesis."
"Or maybe he's sleeping," Leonard said. "It's only ten in the morning. Some people sleep late on weekends."
Penny tried the doorknob. Locked. "His light was on last night when I went to bed. And I haven't heard him leave."
"When did you last see him?" Leonard asked.
"Yesterday evening. He's building me a website for my business." Penny couldn't help smiling when she said it. Her business. It still felt surreal.
"A website?" Sheldon's eyes lit up with interest. "What type of architecture? Database-driven? Static HTML? Please tell me he's not using a WYSIWYG editor."
"I... don't know what any of those words mean," Penny admitted.
Leonard was studying the door with growing concern. "You know, it is kind of weird that he's not answering. Maybe we should check if he's okay."
"How do you propose we do that?" Sheldon asked. "The door is clearly secured, and breaking and entering is both illegal and—"
"We could call him," Penny interrupted.
Leonard pulled out his phone. "What's his number?"
"I... don't actually have it," Penny realized. "We did the whole website thing through cash and handshake. Very old school."
"So we have no way to contact a man who may be unconscious, injured, or deceased behind a locked door," Sheldon observed. "Fascinating. This is like a real-life locked room mystery."
"He's not dead," Penny said quickly, though something cold was settling in her stomach. "He's probably just... working. On the website. With headphones on."
Leonard knocked on the door himself, much harder than Penny had. "Kayel! Are you alright in there?"
Nothing.
Howard Wolowitz appeared at the top of the stairs, slightly out of breath. "Did someone say there might be a dead body? Because I've got to tell you, that would really brighten up my Monday."
"Nobody's dead," Penny snapped. "We're just checking on our neighbor."
"Who isn't answering his door," Leonard added.
"And hasn't been seen in twelve hours," Sheldon noted.
"And might be trapped inside," Howard concluded. "Oh, this is like CSI: Pasadena."
Raj appeared behind Howard, whispering something in his ear.
"Raj suggests we call the police," Howard translated. "He watches a lot of crime shows and says this is exactly how episodes start."
"We're not calling the police," Penny said. "I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation."
But even as she said it, she was remembering how pale and tired Kayel had looked the night before. And that weird nosebleed thing that had happened when he was assembling her bookshelf. What if he was sick? What if he'd collapsed and couldn't get to the door?
"Perhaps," Sheldon said thoughtfully, "he's entered a flow state."
Everyone turned to look at him.
"A flow state," he repeated. "A psychological condition where an individual becomes completely absorbed in an activity. Time becomes irrelevant. External stimuli are ignored. It's particularly common among programmers during extended coding sessions."
Leonard's expression brightened. "That... actually makes sense. If he's working on a complex website project, he might have been up all night coding."
"Programmers have been known to work for days without sleep when they're in the zone," Howard added. "I once spent forty-eight hours straight debugging a navigation algorithm."
"See?" Penny said, feeling relieved. "There's a perfectly reasonable explanation. He's just really focused on the website."
But as they stood in the hallway, looking at the silent door, she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Call it intuition, call it paranoia, but in her experience, when guys went radio silent, it usually meant trouble.
POV: Leonard
By the next morning, Leonard was starting to share Penny's concern.
He'd knocked on Kayel's door three more times throughout the day—once after lunch, once in the evening, and once before bed. Each time, the silence had been absolute. No footsteps, no keyboard clicking, no sounds of life at all.
"Still no answer?" Penny asked when she found him standing outside 4B with his ear pressed to the door.
"Nothing," Leonard said. "I'm starting to think maybe we should be worried."
"I brought him some coffee," Penny said, holding up a Starbucks cup. "I thought maybe the smell would wake him up if he fell asleep at his computer."
She knocked on the door and called out: "Kayel? I've got caffeine!"
Still nothing.
Sheldon emerged from 4A, carrying what appeared to be a stethoscope.
"Where did you get that?" Leonard asked.
"I purchased it online for exactly this type of situation," Sheldon replied. "If our neighbor has indeed succumbed to medical distress, we should be able to detect cardiac and respiratory activity through the door."
He pressed the stethoscope to the door and listened intently for several minutes.
"Well?" Penny asked.
"Inconclusive," Sheldon admitted. "The door is too thick, and there's significant ambient noise from the building's ventilation system."
"So basically, that was useless," Penny said.
"I prefer 'scientifically limited,'" Sheldon replied.
Leonard tried knocking again, louder this time. "Kayel! If you're in there, just give us some kind of sign that you're okay!"
The door remained stubbornly silent.
"You know," Penny said slowly, "I've been thinking about what you said yesterday. About programmers working for days without sleep."
"What about it?" Leonard asked.
"Well, how long can someone actually do that? I mean, before they... you know, collapse or something?"
Leonard and Sheldon exchanged a look.
"The human body can function for approximately seventy-two hours without sleep before experiencing severe cognitive impairment," Sheldon said. "However, the addition of caffeine and hyperfocus can extend that period significantly."
"But not indefinitely," Leonard added. "Eventually, the body shuts down."
Penny looked between them. "So you're saying he could be unconscious in there?"
"It's possible," Leonard admitted. "Though it's also possible he's just really, really focused."
"Or," Howard's voice came from the stairwell, "he's dead, and we're all standing around making excuses for a corpse."
"Howard!" Penny and Leonard said simultaneously.
"What? I'm just saying, it's been like thirty-six hours. That's a long time for someone to be in 'the zone.'"
Raj whispered something to Howard.
"Raj makes a good point," Howard said. "If he's working on a website, shouldn't we be able to hear typing? Or music? Or the fan from his computer running?"
They all fell silent, listening. The building's usual sounds seemed amplified—the hum of air conditioning, the distant murmur of traffic, Mrs. Gutierrez's television from downstairs. But from apartment 4B, there was nothing.
"This is ridiculous," Penny said finally. "I'm calling the building manager."
"Wait," Sheldon said, holding up a hand. "Let me propose an alternative theory."
Everyone looked at him expectantly.
"Perhaps our neighbor is experiencing what I call an 'optimization fugue.' A mental state where an individual becomes so absorbed in perfecting a complex system that they lose all awareness of their physical environment."
"That's just a fancy way of saying flow state," Leonard pointed out.
"No, it's more specific," Sheldon insisted. "A flow state is about performing an activity. An optimization fugue is about perfecting it. The subject becomes obsessed with achieving maximum efficiency, often to the detriment of their own well-being."
"Has this actually been studied?" Leonard asked.
"I'm studying it right now," Sheldon replied. "Our neighbor appears to be an ideal test subject."
Penny stared at him. "You're treating Kayel like a lab rat?"
"A research subject," Sheldon corrected. "And a fascinating one. His cognitive capabilities appear to be significantly above average, yet his social integration patterns suggest introversion bordering on reclusiveness."
"What does that mean in English?" Penny asked.
"He's smart but weird," Howard translated.
"I prefer 'intellectually gifted but socially maladapted,'" Sheldon said.
Leonard knocked on the door one more time. "Kayel? Look, we're all getting a little worried out here. If you're okay, just... I don't know, stomp on the floor or something."
They waited. Nothing.
"That's it," Penny said. "I'm definitely calling the building manager tomorrow morning."
As they dispersed back to their respective apartments, Leonard couldn't shake the feeling that they were missing something important. The silence from 4B wasn't just unusual—it was absolute. Like the apartment was empty.
But Sheldon's theory did make a certain kind of sense. If Kayel was the type of person who got completely absorbed in his work, thirty-six hours wasn't impossible. Unlikely, maybe, but not impossible.
Still, as Leonard settled into bed that night, he found himself listening for any sound from next door. A footstep. A cough. Anything that would prove their neighbor was still alive.
The silence stretched on, unbroken.
POV: System
In the darkness of apartment 4B, status indicators blinked in steady rhythm.
[WEBSITE GENERATION: 38% COMPLETE]
[USER VITALS: STABLE]
[COMA MAINTENANCE: ACTIVE]
[ESTIMATED COMPLETION: 34 HOURS, 17 MINUTES]
The human form on the bed remained perfectly still, chest rising and falling in the slow, measured pattern of deep unconsciousness. Occasionally, rapid eye movements flickered beneath closed lids as the brain processed vast streams of code generation, but otherwise, the body remained as motionless as a corpse.
External sensor arrays detected the repeated knocking at the door, the concerned voices in the hallway, the stethoscope pressed against the exterior wall. All data was logged and filed, but no response protocols were triggered. The user's safety took priority over social concerns.
[NEUROLOGICAL STRESS: WITHIN ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS]
[HYDRATION LEVELS: MONITORING]
[AUTOMATED CARE PROTOCOLS: ACTIVE]
The website took shape in digital space—line after line of perfect code, every function optimized, every security protocol implemented. E-commerce integration, payment processing, inventory management, customer relationship tools. A complete business platform that would rival anything built by professional development teams.
The price was steep, but fair.
The human would understand when he woke up.
They always did.
[PROGRESS UPDATE: 39% COMPLETE]
The indicators continued blinking in the darkness, counting down the hours until consciousness would return to apartment 4B.
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