The Building, part 6

We pulled up to the back of the building—the side on the opposite side from the glass door I’d tried to peer into before. There was a loading dock and port where the truck pulled into and we all got out. I walked with the men up and into the cargo doors, and expected them to take me to Krimm, or some other official who would review my situation.

Instead, they just walked in and spread out, each going to tend to his own duties, leaving me entirely alone, assuming I’d go about whatever it was I had to do. I stood in the middle of a bustling commotion of minions for a moment, waiting for someone to come and direct me to my debrief, but no one did. Each one seemed to be going about his own business, with no one caring about the expendable workers who now lay dead in my home.

When I realized no one was going to tell me what to do or where to go, I suddenly snapped into action, realizing that standing still would look more suspicious than walking with intent. I assumed a brisk pace, but also tried to look around and soak in the sight around me.

The innards of the tower were unrefined. In the middle of it was a massive opening which seemed to rise almost to the top of the tower. This surprised me that the inside of the building was nearly hollow. Around the edges of the building, on each level, was a walkway where minions paced constantly, each running to execute a duty or perform their function.

Along each of the walls ran those red cables which looked like veins or vessels of some sort. They were clearly the inputs from the eyes on the outside of the building, communicating somehow with the workers inside the building. There were so many of them it nearly felt like being inside a living, breathing organism. The walls were also pink and wet and seemingly alive, like the inside of a cheek.

I could not figure out how the eyes and the organs of the building communicated with the minions. How did they instantaneously know where to go and what to do? It felt so instant and thoughtless that it was more like instinct than a relayed, verbal message—like when you sense your hand nearing a hot stove and jerk it away without thinking. That’s how the workers seemed to interact with the tower and all of its eyes.

I looked up the center of the building, where I could see up dozens of stories, and on each level I could see, the workers were running around, carrying out their various tasks, each set on doing whatever they were assigned. There was no rest, no break areas, no sleeping mats. I wondered how they had the energy to be in constant motion with no rest or sleep. Surely they didn’t go home and sleep—the fact that no one had left the building in plain clothes had been clearly reported.

But now here I was, an intruder in the building, undetected, and apparently, not on the same wavelength as these workers.

I walked over to a lift that went up as far as I could see, and waited by the door until the cart appeared. I stepped on with a few other workers. They all pushed a button for their floor, and I pushed the second from the top.

One of the others looked at me and simply said, “85?”

I looked at him and nodded and that was that.

The other guards. each got off at their respective floors and I rode it slowly up to the 85th floor. When it arrived, the fence slid open and I stood on a floor that was mostly empty. It was above the hollow area of the building, so the floor seemed to take up the entire breadth of the building. It was a mostly open floor with a high ceiling. On the far side of this lobby, straight across from the lift door, was an ornate looking double door.

To my right and left were tall windows. In any other building this would have seemed perfectly normal, but then I remembered that I was in a building covered in eyes, which from the outside, had no visible windows whatsoever. How could there be windows from the inside but none visible on the outside? I didn’t know, but couldn’t think about it right now.

Two guards walked around the open lobby space, and both looked at me as the lift opened.

I had clearly come to Nephilous Krimm’s office.

to be concluded…

e

day 13 of 100 days of blogging

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