In the beginning...
When his eyes finally stopped fighting him enough to open partially, somewhere in his mind Wright Cohill - pronounced “co-ill” when he could get people to actually believe him - knew that the muddled combinations of shapes and colors he was trying to un-muddle was decidedly not the ceiling fan in his bedroom. For one, his ceiling fan was the light mahogany and faux-gold trim that you generally find in thrifty apartments; apartments like the one he had lived in the last few years. The fan in his apartment matched his ugly, brown rug that did not tie the room together (it did however have an uncanny knack for absorbing spilled food instead of staining, which was probably the only positive thing that he could bare to say of it). This new fan was a stark white that was somehow whiter than the sterile walls of his apartment, and had no trim to speak of. The ceiling fan in his apartment had a bare, 60-watt bulb with tubing that twisted and swirled around itself in all of its eco-friendly glory. It was a bulb that Wright had purchased out of immense guilt due to how often he fell asleep with the light on. When he bought it, he had not anticipated that it would be longer than the actual cover of the fan light, so ultimately decided to leave the cover off rather than make an embarrassing trip back to the shop to return a single bulb.
Another clue that this was not his ceiling fan was the fact that the light at his home threw a shaky warm, yellow glow to no more than two corners of the room at a time. This fan before him - which was becoming increasingly clearer and sharper as Wright pondered his lack of ownership of it - produced a whiter, brighter sort of light that spread across Wright’s vision without gap or shudder. It was then that Wright realized that this fan had no light in the middle, just a spinning blank center against a smooth blank ceiling. He stared at the center of the fan until it became a swirling focal point, whose revolutions clicked into step with the gears inside Wright’s head. Slowly his eyes traced the outline of the spinning and slowly he had a trace outline of a fact that had been spinning around his head, a fact that he had not until this point been able to clearly focus. The thought was this: Wright Cohill was clearly not in his own bed, nor even in his own apartment.
At this realization he sat straight up. The kind of sudden spring into a sitting position that actors often use as a device for waking from bad dreams in your favorite movies even though no one has ever shot straight up like that in real life. That is, not since the unfortunate incident of around 400 B.C. that included a bad dream, an oil lamp, and the subsequent destruction by fire of three small villages and a goat (which some argue was due to the goat being suicidal, but there isn’t enough evidence to prove either way). He then looked down at his lap as he saw his first splotch of color since waking in the form of a deep red bedspread. Following the spread to its edges, Wright found that he was in a stark white bed frame with a stark white side table. It had one drawer; its stark white knob was almost lost it blended into the stark white table so well. Matching the bed spread in color, as well as the only other colored item in the room, was a red mat at the foot of a door. This rug actually did tie the room together, as it happened.
The door itself was a stark white with a stark white door-knob. The only other piece of furniture was a stark white dresser that upon it had what looked to be a stark white television set - Wright had never seen a white television with a white screen before so wasn’t completely sure that’s what the box was. It surely looked like a television though. After taking a few more moments to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, Wright’s gawking gaze fell once again upon the mat in front of the door. Wright would have been more puzzled at the fact that the rug was inside the room and had the words “WELCOME” stitched into it (all in white), but now that the initial confusion of waking up was settling away it was also stripping his mind of every other obvious question besides one: Where was he again?
It was then Wright Cohill attempted to recollect, and it was then Wright Cohill couldn’t recollect anything. He scrunched his brow underneath his shaggy brown hair, closed his green eyes as tightly as he could, and tried to put together the pieces. At first, there was just darkness; but then a pain in the front of his brain. He balked at first and opened his eyes. The room still being foreign, he tried again; ignoring the pain and squeezing his eyes even more tightly. Eventually different blurry shapes than he was used to today began to form. He had images of black rubber and metal wheels, and then a little girl with bright red hair and an ice cream cone that had lost all of its scoops. She was crying, but for some reason he didn’t think that it was because she lost her icy treat. Her eyes were pleading with him, pleading with him to help her and he knew that he had too. He opened his eyes, that now held a puzzled hint to them. That was a strange thing to think he thought...but it was all that his brain thought to think for him about his day - up until piecing together the blurry blades of spinning white and undetermined light...and for that matter; that light, where was that coming from? Wright took another look around the room, looking for the lamp or lighting fixture that he missed the first ten times around. He was correct in his the evaluation of the room he took before, he found nothing that would be an obvious generator of light. The light was just there. He thought to himself that it must be some sort of high-tech lighting system built into the walls, he had heard something about that hadn’t he? Hidden light sources at really fancy hotels, that sort of thing. That’s why everything was so white, he decided, to help reflect the lighting system. He was in a really fancy hotel for some reason. Yep, that made perfect sense and therefore must be the answer. A maid must have set the rug inside by mistake.
One mystery seemingly solved, Wright internally swelled with pride and smugly swung his legs over the edge of the bed to place his feet against the floor. The next several thoughts Wright that then popped into his brain formed a circle and began arguing with each other, deflating the puffed-chested version of himself and sending it to go sit in the corner for a time out; how can the stark white floor, seemingly smooth, be carpet? How could he know it was carpet when his shoes were on? How could he know that it was the softest carpet he had ever felt between his toes when his toes were neatly wrapped in his loafers? Where did he get these loafers? This was really stacking up to be a hotel that Wright knew he could not afford, and at that he began to panic that he was going to be charged.
“Oh, they better not think that they are going to get away with charging me for this when I haven’t even meant to be here,” was what Wright meant to say at this moment. What came out instead sounded like lion roaring, backwards, while gargling uncooked boba pearls and tap-dancing (this show has been getting rave reviews in Las Vegas for years, if you can find someone who has actually found the off-strip location where it’s held twice annually). His mouth snapped shut around what he thought was going to be the word “better” and he looked wildly around the room to see if anyone else had heard that. Relieved that he was still alone, Wright opened and closed his mouth a few times. He moved his mouth into different shapes, stretched his tongue out and back in like a giraffe - a nice giraffe, Wright didn’t approve of those evil ones - and attempted to clear his throat a couple of times.
“Ahem...is that any better?” and it was Wright’s actual voice for the most part, there was still a half-hearted kick-ball-chain in the background of it, but all said and done he could speak again. Regaining the feel of puffy pride, Wright decided that it was time to see what was really going on and stood up. He then immediately fell over and onto the ceiling.
If Wright Cohill had had any sense to think as he went careening towards the ceiling, he may have been worried about hitting the ceiling fan. Instead he hit the stark white, and not at all crunchy, ceiling hard enough to knock both the air and the thought out of him before he even realized that he should be thinking it. The fan itself had avoided him, and continued its slow, determined spinning - Wright could feel the wind from the arms of the fan tousling part of his hair as he lay next to it. He lifted his head and looked at the fan blades for a moment, then looked down/up towards the bed and the carpet that was and wasn’t there.
It was dizzying to him, looking down...or was it up? Looking towards the furniture. As a child Wright had constantly rolled out of bed in the middle of the night, which caused him to dream terrible dreams of being thrown off of things. Things that didn’t look very high, but he would never hit the ground. He would merely just continue falling endlessly until he woke up, full of the falling feeling and covered in sweat. This in turn instilled a deep anxiety when it came to heights larger than a few feet. Being on the ceiling was not a good place for him to be, but despite that fact he tried to stand up for a moment. The vertigo was enough to bring him back down to the ceiling-floor-whatever. It hadn’t felt like he was going to fall back to the side of the room that seemed like the floor, really it had felt like normal ground, but seeing the furniture coming up/down at him was just too much. He closed his eyes and tried again.
This method was a bit more fruitful. As long as his eyes remained closed, Wright found that his shoulders would lift off the floor...followed by his middle...and then his head...legs...he was standing! Forgetting himself for a moment, Wright burst into an awkward victory jig. Since his eyes were still screwed shut, his ankle was not told to watch out for the fan blades as it struck out ahead of him. A blade unceremoniously clipped said ankle and brought Wright back down/up to the ceiling.The crumpled heap that was Cohill sighed to himself and dared a peek in the hopes he may have been on the floor instead. There was no such luck, the spinning fan seemed to whisper to him.
"Greetings honored guest! We hope that you have been becoming well acquainted with your room!" The voice came from above/below and it was surely enough to override Wright’s Height Issue. He looked quickly towards the sound, which coincidentally was the same direction as the stark white television. For the first half a moment, there was nothing but a stark white screen, and thus Wright wasn’t immediately sure that’s where the voice originated. Slowly though, a silhouette began to form in the middle of the blankness.
"Before attempting to speak, please note that your vocal chords may be slightly confused from the transportation process. Do not be alarmed if it takes a few attempts to reorganize your own voice," said the man who was now fully formed upon the screen. He had a pleasant face, and one that seemed both eternally familiar and completely stranger at the same time. Wright felt he had seen this man before, or at least men that looked like him; black, neat hair, brown eyes, friendly features that were not terribly memorable nor offensive in the least. He was only visible from the shoulders up, but he was wearing a matching stark white suit to the room and a tie the same red as the welcome rug.
"If you have not attempted to leave your bed, you should do so now. Please proceed with caution however as you will need to make a conscious decision as to which end of the room is up. Try to mind the fan if your preference is the ceiling," "If my preference is the ceiling?" Wright echoed, confused at the thought that he might have a choice and thinking that surely if he did, he would choose the floor. Surely enough, the instant Wright thought this his body followed it, straight down from the ceiling and towards the floor. Somehow, Wright had aligned himself back with the bed and the bed happily broke his fall. Only this time his feet were at the head and his head was at the foot. He opened his eyes, and saw the same image of the ceiling fan that he had at the beginning of this debacle. In that instant, he almost thought it a dream, but then he thought about the throbbing in his ankle. That was the last straw for him, thus he lept off the bed and rushed over to the television, shouting.
"Excuse me sir! Excuse me but there really is some confusion here! I have no idea why I am here or what I was doing on the ceiling or why you are acting like any of this is reasonable! I am a reasonable man, sir, but you really need to tell me what is going on this instant!" He shouted, and shouted some more. The man just remained silent and smiling his immemorable smile, charming as it was for the moment it was in view. Wright shouted various versions of the same explanations until his face started become red, or at least more crimson than it had already been from the stress of so much falling. His fists became bunched and his arms started waving them around in protest of the situation. This went on for several minutes, and was entirely unlike any outburst Wright had performed before. The man on the television had still not moved or continued talking during this rant, though as soon as Wright ran out of shouting and paused for breath he continued.
"We would like to remind you that this is a recording and thus you cannot speak with me directly. Please save any and all questions for your Liaison who should be with your momentarily. We do thank you for your patronage today, and hope you enjoy your stay with us...Mr. Cohill," and then the image of the man faded into the stark whiteness the television had had when he woke up. Wright was left red faced, arms frozen in mid exclamation, and blinking bewilderdly at the place the man had been.
Knock knock went the door, and the it slide open...it did not swing open as knob had implied, but disappeared into the door frame leaving a space that looked like it never had a door. There was no notch for the knob, yet the door slid smoothly into the frame. Wright was still too flustered to notice he noticed, though later when trying to make sense of the situation he remembered this fact. Standing in its stead was the man from the supposedly recorded message. He was indeed all in the same stark white, with the same red tie and apparently matching red shoelaces. Wright turned his head toward the man from the t.v., but his body did not move and his hands were still outstretched in some sort of big arms thing.
"You...were just...I...ceiling...WHAT IS GOING ON HERE!?" was all that Wright could muster.
"Mr. Cohill, hello and welcome! I assure you that that was not me on the screen, if that was what you were wondering. But we are very happy to have you staying with us! We do not get many visitors to our executive suites, especially completely new visitors, so I can tell you we are all abuzz with excitement. I am Liaison, and if you will just follow me we really should head out. She has been waiting for you." he said with a friendly smile. Liaison then turned and disappeared to the left of the door. Without realizing he was doing so, Wright followed. Out in the hallway was very stretched in both directions, with doors similar to his as far as he could see. Wright’s arms eventually made the trip back down to his sides while the red retreated from his face. This corridor was almost more curious to him than the room, which made him forget the state he had just been in. All the doors were the same, and there were dozens of them on each side. Much too close together to make sense of how big his own room had been - the doors next to his own were mere inches away. That would have to wait though, Wright wasn’t quite ready for that one.
Taking a moment to attempt a processing of what had happened since waking, Wright found a more quiet but more coherent version of his voice.
"Uhm, Liaison is it? Are you certain you weren’t the same person on the television? You look exactly like him," Wright figured this was a good starting question, a question that wasn’t about something like the cessation of normal gravity or the endless corridor of stark white rooms.
"I am quite sure, sir. That was Welcome and he is in charge of the screen greetings. I am Liaison and will be your escort during your stay with us. Please turn right now, sir," Liaison said and made a sharp right into a hallway Wright had not seen coming. He glanced behind them after the turn and saw not the turn they had just made but the same long stretch of corridor that he had seen before.
"The turn..." he started, but Liaison cut him off. "Yes sir, it is not there anymore as is intended. Please turn left now," they now made a sharp left. "This is why you need a Liaison, sir. Guests are not allowed to navigate the halls on their own, for your own safety."
"Safety...ok...safety from what?"
"From getting lost sir, it is not advisable. Especially executive guests like yourself." Wright was quiet again for a moment as he thought about what his next question should be. Liaison was not exactly volunteering anything useful. They just kept walking, making occasionally turns this way or that at Liaison’s discretion, the view from behind and ahead always the same. "Liaison...I do feel I am being quite patient here so I hope you will answer...what exactly is going on? I do not recall checking in to this...hotel? Nor do I quite understand why I would deserve executive status. I certainly can’t afford to pay for some place this...advanced" For the first time since starting, Liaison stopped. He turned towards Cohill with an apologetic expression on his face.
"I am very sorry sir, but I cannot answer ’what is going on’. She has instructed me to leave that to Her. I can say that you do not need to worry about money here, so you can ease your mind of that concern. I really do appreciate your calm and patience though, sir, This is understandably confusing situation and your demeanor will make your stay here much more smoothly. Please turn around and step into the elevator, Mr. Cohill."
Wright stared at Liaison for a few seconds, then opened his mouth to start explaining that there was no elevator. Then he remembered the corridors, clamped his mouth shut, and made a slow about face. Sure enough, instead of the myriad of stark white doors, there was an open elevator in their steed. It was black - no, obsidian - instead of white, yet still stark, and still inexplicably well lit.
Stepping inside and turning again to face the open doors, Liaison sidled up next to him. The door closed and the elevator began to move, though of course without a button’s press by Liaison. In fact, there were no buttons to push. They were completely encased in a well lit black box...and they were going down.
And they went down...
...and down...
...and then went down some more. Until eventually, finally...they stopped.
The black doors opened to an expansive hall. A hall so vast that sound takes longer to travel due to having to stop and ask for directions. Floor to ceiling, it was such a stark white that the purest snow still would of looked dirty upon it. It was the biggest room Wright had ever seen, and thus he stood there gawking at it. The walls were broken up by expertly spaced, deeply set square windows. The single panes of what he could only assume was glass was a red, the same red had been seeing all day. The only other thing breaking up the veritable magnitude of the room was the tiny frame of a moderately sized desk at the opposite end, with an apparent figure working busily at it. The wall behind it was blank, no windows at all nor any other markings. Wright peered at the figure...he couldn’t tell, but he would have sworn that was Liaison hunched over the desk. He looked to his side to make sure the man was still there. When he did, Liason smiled at him.
"Take all the time that you wish, but we can proceed whenever you are ready." He said with a nod towards the desk.
"Why is this room so large for so little?" Wright inquired.
"It isn’t, sir. Shall we see?"
"I can see! It is clearly an enourmous and vast and near empty room!"
"No it isn’t sir, let’s go see Reception shall we?"
"Fine, we’ll see reception and you’ll see what I mean..." and with that Wright started across the room. He glanced at the windows as he walked passed the first set of them. They were not exactly translucent, and they seemed to glow without casting any light. He sometimes thought he could see shapes shifting beneath every now and again, but he couldn’t quite grasp what was changing about the glass that made him think that. After a few steps, he paused. He hadn’t been watching where he was going, but the desk seemed much closer than it should have been. So close in fact that he seemed to have crossed half of the long room in a very short amount of steps. He thought quietly for a moment and then turned to face the elevator again. The wall which most likely had the elevator set in it seemed much more than a few steps off. It looked to be about the right size for a doormouse from where he stood. He had also apparently walked passed several of the red pane squares, though he could only recollect actually passing one during his short walk.
Wright slowly opened his mouth to speak. He was about to ask how that had happened, but the question did not have enough confidence that it was worth leaving his lips.
"That’s...very impressive..." was all that he could muster. He was about to ask about the panes of red as well, but again could not put forth the effort to do so. Maybe his brain was too tired after the day he was having. His body, though, wasn’t in that way. He didn’t feel tired at all in that sense, despite tumbling around the room and walking the twisting turns of the endless corridor. "Let’s get on with it then."
Wright about faced, and faced the face of Liason sitting across the desk...which was now directly in front of him despite the fact that he hadn’t moved toward the desk at all and was standing in the spot that had seemed half a room away. This had to be Liaison. The hair was the same, eyes, smile, white suit, red tie, everything was exactly the same as the man he had been following all day. His head darted to his right, right into the eyes of Liason again standing next to him, who was standing stock still and smiling politely. Then back to Liaison behind the desk, who was sitting stock still and smiling politely. Then back to his side, back to the desk etc and so on for a few moments. Finally, Liason To His Right cleared his throat.
"Mr. Cohill sir, this is Reception. Reception, I believe you are aware of Mr. Cohill’s appointment, " said Liaison’s voice.
"But of course! Mr. Cohill, it is a pleasure to finally meet you! We have all been very excited by your arrival. She has been expecting you of course, you may go in anytime you are ready. You are Her only appointment today. Of course, " said Reception’s voice, sounding just like Liaison’s.
"How...how is it that...are you two related?!" said Wright’s voice, which sounded like neither Reception’s nor Liaison’s. "And in fact, that Welcome fellow as well, you are brothers...right? Triplets? For a moment I was convinced this one, " he pointed at Liason "had been playing me a silly fool and had recorded himself...but there are clearly more than one of you!" The men who seemed mirror images looked at each other curiously for a moment. Then chuckled, not impolitely, but at the same time, for the same length of time, and with the same timber.
"I don’t believe we are, Mr. Cohill," Liaison answered. "However that is a great and wonderful question to ask, I shall see if I can get the answer for you. No one has ever asked us that before."
"Yes, no one has, " echoed Reception "and now I feel I am actually curious about it as well. Thank you for that! Welcome is certainly not Liaison, and that was certainly not a recording you saw earlier. Mr. Cohill. At least, I don’t think it was, " he looked to Liaison, "Li, Welcome hasn’t gotten lazy and began to record his messages has he?"
"No, he hasn’t. She hasn’t given me leave to explain anything to Mr. Cohill, he doesn’t quite understand yet."
"Ah, ok then good. You may enter The Office whenever you please, the doors are of course behind me." Wright, for some reason, had been staring at the wall and marvelling at how starkly white it was. It seemed almost as if all the color was being sucked up by room itself, and then recycled back in to brighten the room. The hypnosis he was slipping into was broken by the ending of Reception’s sentence.
"Aha!" exclaimed Wright "There’s nothing there! I’m even LOOKING at it this time!" He dropped his gaze to the not-twins triumphantly, who were looking back at him curiously. Reception and Liaison’s gaze went from Wright’s to each others’, then to the back wall. They didn’t say a word, but frankly they didn’t have to. Remembering where he was, as much as he actually knew where he was, Wright suddenly knew what was to come next.
"There is going to be a door there when I look again, isn’t there?"
And there was, of course. A set of double doors in fact. The same stark-white-plus-knob doors as the one in his room, and the hundreds he had walked past in the hall(s) on his way to this cavernously small room. Well, they was the same other than the fact that its handle was obsidian, like the inside of the elevator. The handles gleamed softly. There was no way he would have missed that, the way that the knobs glinted. Not when he had been across the room, and certainly not when he had been staring at the expanse of white a moment before. Wright didn’t have it in him to bring it up this time.
"So...this woman that you keep speaking of, she will be in the office behind those doors then?"
Liaison and Reception nodded enthusiastically.
"And she will tell me what is going on?"
"Yes sir, She will tell you whatever she feels you should be made aware of." Liasion answered.
"Well...ok then. I suppose I better get on with it." Wright stepped passed the not-twins and and to the door, stopping in front of it and looking at the knob. He reached out to grasp the knob, but hesitated. The door in his room had slide open, knob and all. He wondered if this did the same.
As if hearing his interior monologue, as soon as he thought that thought the door clicked and slid open, knob and all. It disappeared into the frame, but Wright could not tell you how the knob fit. What behind it was...nothing. Whiteness. Stark whiteness, if that wasn’t obvious by now. There didn’t look to be a floor, ceiling, back wall, nothing. Color and shape were in absence, and Wright did not know what to make of it. He looked back to the pair looking back to him from Reception’s desk. Reception just stared, but Liaison spoke up almost immediately.
"Do not be alarmed, sir. Just step forward and you will be in The Office. You will not be harmed."
Wright didn’t say anything back. He simply looked back to the starkness, sighed, closed his eyes, and stepped forward. Nothing happened. Then he took another step. Nothing happened again. It was as if he had just walked forward into a room. He heard the door click and close behind him, so he knew he was in somewhere. He ventured one eye open. And saw...nothing.
Or more accurately, blackness. Or even more accurately, obsidian. The entire Office was obsidianly black, like the elevator and the door knobs, except for a few things here and there. With one eye he saw black shelving with innumerable books and what looked to be figurines. He saw a black ceiling fan, spinning silently as the one in his room had. He saw a water cooler with a black tinted jug upon it that bubbled as his gazed went across it. His other eye joined the first in its visual evaluation of The Office.
With two eyes, he saw a black cage with a red bird in it, shifting its head back and forth so it could look at him with one eye or the other. He saw a globe of Earth, black on black, with tiny shifting dots of red. And in the middle of the room, somehow the last thing he saw, a large black desk made of some sort of laquered wood. A black Newton’s cradle was upon it, in motion, yet not making a sound. There was also what seemed to be a corded phone, which was in fact white...the only white thing in the place. Even the stack of papers in the In/Out boxes were black with red writing. Sitting at the desk was a woman. Staring at him, with her arms resting on the desktop and her hands steepled together at the fingertips. She was wearing a sharply black woman’s suit, a small symbol he couldn’t quite make out upon one lapel. That was the only thing about her that was muted in darkness as the room was, her features were a cacophony of color.
Her hair was red, and vibrant red at that. It curled about her face like wildfire, and was unkempt in a way that made you feel like she had just stumbled out of bed, and yet at the same time it seemed appropriate for mixed company. The face it framed was soft and beautiful, with the vaguest impression of freckles. Wright had a moment of deja vu...he had seen this beautiful fire-touched woman before, but he couldn’t place where in that moment. Nor could he fathom how he could forget meeting, or even just seeing in passing, someone like the woman he beheld before him. Especially when his eyes stumbled into hers, and did nothing to get themselves out.
The eyes were a curious tint of green, jade being the most appropriate known hue to use in description. No, they were darker shade of green than jade, so much darker now that they were brown. But really, they were black. Wright realized then that they were changing colors, and the shock of that was the only reason that he was able to brake the stare that they threw in his direction. Avoiding locking into that gaze again, he started glancing about the stark black room again and cleared his throat.
"Ahem, um...ma’am? I, uh, believe that you wanted to see me? Your employees kept mentioning that I made an appointment, but I really don’t remember that...to be honest I really don’t know what this place is, in fact, " talking was helping, it was making him feel more comfortable facing down the intensity of the explosion that was this woman in the middle of this black room, "I don’t really remember much about where I was before this, I think I was on my way to work...that makes the most sense. There may have been a car accident involving a young child or something, I’m not really sure. But basically I think there must be some mistake because like I said, I didn’t make an appointment and there is no fathomable reason in my mind as to why I should be here."
Having said his piece, Wright allowed himself to focus on her face again. Throught her steepled fingers, he realized that she was smiling. She hadn’t been smiling before, something he had just said had made her do so. The thought that he made her smile made Wright feel pretty much elated, but that feeling was nothing compared to how blissed he felt when she dropped her arms to cross each other on the desk in front of her, and he heard her voice for the first time.
"I am now sure that there is no mistaking the fact that you are meant to be here," the sound felt like soul wrenching music, and echoed like a fantastical sunset in his ears. The slight pause she took just then was almost distressing to him.
"You can call me Eva, Mr. Wright, and I must say that I absolutely love what you have done with the place!"