Prologue 5

Those were the fleeting thoughts of fancy that I noticed the next morning, but thankfully they were fuzzy-enough for me to forgive their existence among my other morning revelations. An example of such intelligent notation of my surroundings related to my coffee machine, which refused to give me any magical black substance that gets people moving in the morning. My second revelation was that I was late for work. I decided that I might as well use up the last of my vacation, and sick, days and keep myself out of a stressful environment for a little while longer in order to procrastinate. And so, once more, I retracted into my cave for some more rest to counter my lack of a certain dark substance that would have prevented me from doing so.

I awoke at 3:45pm; at which point I showered, shaved, and showed a fair amount of animosity towards the looming mountainous mass of dishes which I had to conquer. Thus, I waged war and found victory against the dreaded chores of a civilized bachelor. At this juncture I found the best waste of my time would be to see how long it would take, talking with him, for my sanity to flee.

As I pulled up to the black building; something told me to go back and run the other way. These emotions were completely unfounded though, because everything was as it should be. The only thing that drew me to that conclusion, originally, was the building's color and attitude from the outside. Surface-level appearances mean almost nothing. When I entered the building I was greeted by staff at the front of the house; they were just as fake and cheerful as I had expected. I was given a visitor's badge, since I knew the CEO, it was easy to convince the people at the counter to allow me access to the rest of the building. As I trotted up the stairs I noted that they were oddly shallow. The stairs went up several flights, didn't have railings, and on top of that they were slightly crooked. It became distracting after a while as I lifted my feet too high only to find that the next step was smaller than I had calculated causing a brief moment of panic at each step. As I brushed past people going along the staircase I also noticed that the people were paying very close attention to the stairs when going down. I wasn't at all surprised though because if you tripped on your way down, then you would end up face-planting in the lobby after a considerably long tumble down.

When I reached the end of the first flight of stairs; nothing seemed familiar. The workers were all buzzing about, and everything seemed normal, but the cube-field of offices looked different than they had the day before. One of the things that I noticed first was the fact that people were working and moving at a normal pace. This was the exact opposite from the floor where he was dwelling, which was chaotic with just the slightest look of panic and confusion, instead this place seemed oddly normal. As I walked around I saw a bunch of trinkets lining the cookie-cutter setup in each worker's cubicle. Some people had pictures of their kids, or some little random home-made goodies, and someone even had a miniature television in his office. As I passed by I noticed something really strange, and it was that the numbers on the cubicles and offices were all out of order. You would see a 213 office directly adjacent from a 53 or a 876. While this was a bit of a surprise at first; I didn't think too much about it because it seemed to fit the style of the man in charge. This pattern proceeded with the next floors, but things got substantially worse on each floor. More chaos, more demand, more confusion. Then it all stopped.

When I reached floor 53 everything stopped. There were no cube-shaped masses scattering the floor, and there were fewer employees on this floor than any of the previous floors, but everything here still seemed just as tense as I had expected form the pattern. The lights were off, but the windows were open, and the few remaining people were still hustling around the room. The only differences between the people on this floor, that weren't based on appearance or rank, were the changes in tone. They all exerted a kind of confidence that muffled the chaos. I could tell that these people were the managers, and the bosses, and the engineers working in the background to keep the company running. This floor was for the unpopular few who did their job for the success of the company; congratulating themselves with only self-respect and black coffee. They are the muscle behind the figure-head of the company, and the intellectuals that steer it to it's success, but they are also the most under-appreciated of the workers. I never found my way back to floor 53 ever again.

The next 6 floors were all desolate and empty. Not a human on the horizon. Then I reached what I thought would be the last floor. Floor 60 was, by far, the most hidden and closed off room in the building. The stairs leading up to it were a challenge all on their own, and the elevator going up stopped 10 floors back. The stairs were a hazard because of all the dust they had collected over the years with only a few footprints leading up. I wanted to turn around and shuffle back to the elevator that led down. Then something caught my eye. The green wall-paper that I so hated. An entire larger room on this floor appeared to be colored in it. I could tell because it was brighter than the light being emitted from the functioning electrical lamps above my head. I could see a few flickering tongues of lime-green creeping around the white corners, and my hatred for that blinding nuisance drove me right to it. I wanted to tear it from the walls. When I reached the source I realized that it was, in fact, not his office. The door was locked, but it was just open-enough to find my way in. It was chaos. Papers were strewn across the room as if someone has been rushing through processes and forgetting what he left behind. There were pieces of technology scattered around the room. Random contraptions were shelved or thrown about. Prototypes were huddling together in a pile on the floor; while more-finished products were haphazardly placed around the room. A few started to look like HMDs (head mounted displays) along with some peripherals that probably worked with them. I was so captivated by the disaster, that I had not noticed when he walked in.

There were bags under his eyes, and his posture was closer to that of a depressed vulture. His hands lay raggedly at his sides, and he glanced angrily at me but seemed to be at a loss of words at the moment. His hands were covered in pencil led and oil, and he looked more withered than usual. I was shocked to see him, but I didn't know if I was supposed to speak or not. He said two words: "get out." And I could tell, by the look on his face, that he didn't want to explain anything currently. He called Kassie to escort me out of the building after he entered the room.

She had a look of urgency, frustration, anger, fear, and a few other emotions I couldn't pinpoint when she came and got me. We walked silently down the stairs at a surprising rate that I could only assume was to put distance between us and him. No time was wasted getting out of the building. We walked through the lobby, after riding down the elevator, and ran out the door.