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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Where am I? I don’t remember this place. Did Dad take me to work once when I was small? But then, why is it all in black and white? My confusion only increased when I noticed the recessed rail in the ceiling. Like the tracks I’ve seen clothing move along at the dry cleaners.
It looped around the ceiling, then out the closed door through a narrow gap at the top. It piqued my curiosity, but I meant to finish searching the room before leaving it. The only other furniture was a pair of black filing cabinets...both locked.
Dejected, I turned towards the door. But as I did so, I took notice of a sheet of paper sticking out of the typewriter. I walked over, took hold of the knob I knew would advance the paper, and turned it until I could pull the sheet free from the ungainly machine. “Everything is normal” it read. Beneath that, “Don’t look at them, except in reflections. Don’t talk about them to anyone. Don’t say or do anything which gives away that you’re aware of their presence. Only writing is safe, they cannot read it.”
I turned the sheet over, but that really was everything written on it. Whoever wrote this didn’t even sign their name, and there was nothing in the way of a nameplate or business cards to give any indication of who worked here before I arrived. Who still works here, possibly?
With no more answers to be found in the musty little office, I took the hat off the rack and donned it before heading out into the hallway. The overhead metal rail continued here, as if some tiny monorail or gondola were meant to travel along, suspended from it.
As I stood there studying it, something whipped by behind me. So fast that I wouldn’t have realized if not for the sound, and the subtle gust of air. I turned this way and that looking for whatever it was, but the hallway was as empty as I’d found it moments earlier.
What the hell was that? I figured if I followed the rail far enough I might find out, so I began walking. The corridor stretched out before me to the point that however I squinted, I couldn’t make out the end. Just how big can this building be?
When I saw a distant figure approaching, at first I thought I must be seeing things. But he looked real enough close up, wearing the exact same outfit as mine. “A hat indoors? Why, who’s ever heard of such a thing? That’s hardly normal if you ask me” the stranger chuckled, snatching my hat off my head before handing it to me.
“Where am I? What is any of this?” I asked. He looked stunned. Then increasingly nervous. “What do you mean? This is where we all work. What else would it be?” I described how I got here from the point that I fell asleep with the helmet on.
He was now visibly sweating. “Listen fella that’s...I’ve never heard such a...no more of that, alright? None of that.” He brushed at my suit as if to clean away dust while furtively glancing around, though for what I could not yet say. “Looking sharp! You’ve got your tie on just right, that’s what I like to see. Exactly how it should be.”
I shrugged off the compliment and told him in no uncertain terms that something felt off about this place. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something’s wrong here, isn’t it.” He backed away. “No! Nothing’s wrong! Nothing! Everything’s as normal as can be! Always has been!”
Before I could press him for more, he turned tail and hurried off the way he came. The baffling encounter only increased my curiosity. Further down the hallway, I came upon a bathroom. Inside was more or less what I expected, a series of stalls and a large mirror taking up most of the near wall with a row of sinks under it.
I studied myself in the mirror. Neatly ironed grey suit, grey pants, white button down shirt and a black tie. Though really, they could be wildly clashing colors for all I knew. Then I saw it. Gliding slowly along the overhead rail, which intruded even here.
It looked something like a cluster of metal instruments. A security camera, a light, a microphone, various small sensors...and the barrel of what I assumed to be a gun. All of it mounted to a pivoting base which hung from the rail by a pair of rubberized wheels.
It made a quiet grinding, trundling sound as it slid along the rail, slowly circling the bathroom. I continued watching it...but only through the mirror. The warning in my office sprang to mind, that I was never to look at them directly.
Suddenly it stopped, then turned to examine me. I made a show of washing my face, fixing my hair and so on. Seemingly satisfied by the ruse, it then slid out the way it came, door opening automatically for it by some motorized mechanism as it left.
Holy hell. What the fuck was that? I thought about hunting down the fellow from the hallway and asking him, but concluded he’d probably be tight lipped as before. What is this place? Why build those rails? Why isn’t there any color?
I whispered, quietly as I could, that I wanted the helmet turned off. When nothing happened, I whispered a bit louder, but with the same result. Finally, my voice now trembling, I demanded that the helmet be removed as loudly as I dared.
Still nothing. Did he leave the room? Slowly, another possibility dawned on me. Could I have...fallen asleep? I’ve never had such a vivid dream though. I tried all of the cliche methods for waking up, like pinching myself and holding my breath.
If it’s a dream, it’s stubbornly persistent. I could try looking at the moon, except that every window I tried simply looked out onto more office buildings, packed together so tightly that nothing else was visible. Not the sky, not the ground below, just endless concrete and windows.
I gave up on it for the time being and resumed exploring the place. Every door looked the same, and the few that I opened revealed offices identical to mine. “Oh, sorry” I said when the office I’d barged into was unexpectedly occupied.
“Not at all, friend. But what are you doing here, rather than in your office? Are you on break?” I shook my head, unaware until then that anybody took breaks around here. He frowned. “Well that’s hardly normal then, is it? Off you go.”
There was a strained cheer to his voice and demeanor that unnerved me. Like the subtly twitching grin of a man held hostage by an offscreen gunman, assuring his family through a video camera that everything is fine.
I now had at least the beginnings of an understanding. Some sense of why anybody would remain here, why they would pretend nothing is out of the ordinary. But I also didn’t care to learn any more than I had to in order to escape.
Is escape even possible, I wonder. Wouldn’t there just be more office buildings? Then more beyond that? What if it’s one huge contiguous structure? The hallway certainly seemed to extend into infinity, from what I could see of it.
When I found the break room, the air was thick with smoke. A cigarette hung from the lips of absolutely everyone present. About a dozen of them, all dressed identically. All men with black hair, pale skin and samey looking faces, smoking like a couple of chimneys.
“Say fella, aren’t you gonna smoke?” one of them asked as I stood there taking it all in. I politely declined. He seemed disturbed by it. “What do you mean, no? Everybody smokes because it’s normal. You want to be normal don’t you? Of course you do.”
He handed me a cigarette. I gave up and placed it between my lips, holding it steady while he ignited the tip using a stainless steel lighter. I puffed a few times to satisfy him, after which he resumed mingling with the others.
“So...what exactly do you all do here?” They stared back in confusion. One tipped his hat and scratched his head. “Well, er...we work. This is “work”. As in “going to work”. Why do I have to tell you? You new or something?” He shared a chuckle with the others.
I told him that in fact I am new, but that he didn’t answer my question. “What sort of work gets done here?” A short silence followed. One of them volunteered that sometimes he sits at his desk and types on his typewriter. Another nodded, looking relieved. “See? There you go.”
But I wasn’t satisfied. “What exactly do you write?” He looked at once irritated and anxious. “Look buddy, you’re new. You obviously don’t understand how things work around here. That’s why I stopped by your office earlier and wrote you a little something to help you get started.”
He stared intently at me. I thought back to the contents of the note. As I did so, the other men suddenly shifted subtly. Tensing up, their eyes wide. I heard a quiet, raspy metallic sound behind me, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
It’s right there, isn’t it. Right now. Behind me. I dare not look, I dare not say anything. Everything in me wanted to turn and face it, fighting that urge required a degree of discipline I did not realize was in my possession until now.
The others looked this way and that, staring off into space. Not at anything in particular, just straining as I was not to look at the dangling cluster of machinery just behind me. “S-say fella” one of them nervously stammered, “why don’t I show you the ropes? Come to my office and I’ll show you a thing or two about how to fit in here.”
I eagerly nodded, still fighting the urge to turn around and look at the presence I felt just behind me. The suited man got up from his seat and headed for the hallway, gesturing for me to follow. As I did so, I heard the familiar raspy grinding of the thing following us.
We just kept walking until the sound faded. Did it lose interest? Is it capable of that? It’s a machine isn’t it? Just how intelligent can it be? I still didn’t feel safe enough to peer over my shoulder. Even when he led me into his office, I didn’t let my guard down.
He held his index finger to his lips. Then plucked a pencil from the mug on his desk and scribbled something on a sheet of paper. “Carry on some sort of banal conversation with me. It can hear us everywhere and is attracted to any behavior that is out of the ordinary. While you do that, help me move the file cabinet.”
I read over it again, confused until he actually began to wheel the file cabinet away from the wall. “Oh, ah...ahem...work is going very well lately, wouldn’t you say?” I’ve never been much of an actor. But then, I’ve also never had any need to act convincingly until now.
“Indeed” he replied as he finished sliding the cabinet across the room, revealing a hole he must have knocked through the wall some time ago. “I estimate productivity is as high as it’s ever been. Everything’s exactly as normal as it should be.” He frantically waved me towards the hole.
I ducked through. He followed, pulling the cabinet behind him to once again conceal the hole. I began to speak but he shushed me, gesturing once more for me to follow him. I couldn’t understand the space we now occupied. There shouldn’t be this much space between the walls, surely?
It looked utilitarian. A rusting steel framework propping up the paper thin walls, steel pipe snaking this way and that, both along the walls and overhead. What little light there was to see by intruded into this space through the slots in ventilation grates.
“Alright. We’re out of range now, you can speak” he muttered. I didn’t know where to begin, thousands of possible questions fighting to escape my lips at the same time. “Where are we?” I begged. “What is this place? What are those things?”
He leaned back against the cold concrete wall of the utility corridor, wooden walkway creaking beneath him as he shifted his weight. “It’s...something like the backstage of your dreams. You’re sleeping right now, aren’t you?”
I answered that I didn’t really know, but that I began to suspect it early on. He sighed. “Well that’s how I got here anyway, I assume it’s the same for the others. Can’t say for sure why I’ve been here so long. Just a coma, I hope? Or perhaps time just passes differently here.”
I pressed him for details about the contraptions which slide along the overhead rails. “I wish I knew. That’s how most of the newbies die. Those things are so lightning quick, they’re behind you the instant you give it away. The very microsecond you reveal that you know about them. Then there’s a dart in your neck, and it’s lights out for you.”
I put my hand over my mouth. “Yeah, I seen it so many times. The others only made it because I got to them in time, left them a note or brought them here and told them how to survive. I never even seen what it does with the bodies, I can’t watch of course. They’re just gone the next time I look.”
I asked what he meant about the “backstage of my dreams.” He looked at me funny. Then continued crawling down the corridor, instructing me to follow. The corridor emptied out into what could only be a hollow, unfinished portion of the building.
But it made no sense. There weren’t even floors here. Like most of it was just a hollow shell, only put together enough to fool the people who never leave “work”. The cavernous, darkened rectilinear expanse was punctuated here and there by the glowing rims of what I initially took for spotlights, protruding through the outer walls.
The stranger noticed my interest and pried one of them loose. It was in fact a television monitor, the old picture tube style, playing a looping animation of a human silhouette moving behind curtains. It then dawned on me that this is what I saw earlier through the “windows” of the other buildings. Just so many out-facing monitors, creating the illusion of a fully inhabited structure.
“Why? Why fake all this? For what possible reason?” He shrugged. “Well then, why don’t you leave?” I pried. It seemed to me, based on what he’d so far shown me, that there was no good reason to remain here and all the reasons in the world to attempt escape.
“Well, for one thing” he explained, “the people who show up here are sitting ducks without me. Know-nothings who will inevitably attract those...mechanical...whatever they are. They’ll look right at ‘em or ask about them, not realizing what will happen. I’m the only reason anybody makes it.”
Stay Tuned for Part 6!