The Mind Room: Introduction

Seated in a firm chair that straddles the fringe of discomfort, in a drab and small cubicle of a room not unlike the lobby/waiting area of a professional building that would constitute the employment of a lobby/waiting area, I stare ahead blankly while ruminating a perplexing omission of memory. Most of what I see exists, somehow, in black and white. The black and white of a modern art film rather than that of antiquity. In fact, there are colors, sparse as they are. The room is almost featureless aside from a reception desk where a monochromatic woman pounds away upon a blocky keyboard, focusing on the blocky monitor. Immediately at my left is a door, a mirror image across from it. Reflected almost completely, the door across the way stands beneath a glass strip. There are three more chairs at my right, two facing me from the opposite side of the room. The reception counter is no more than five feet away from that door, occupying a corner diagonal from myself. What little features remain to be described come in the form of ragged posters, still black and white. They are weathered to a downright prehistoric degree. There are three: two shots of the space shuttle and one of the moon. All are torn and faded and aesthetically terrible.

It was during or perhaps after a fit of near cataleptic exertion when my perception temporarily ceased. A psychotic black out. I'm deciding to cut this passage short for the post, it will be in the final product.

My blank slate is filled in when there sounds a dense chime, as if from nowhere at all. "Interview time." The woman says. "Have you your summoning card, sir?"

"Me?" I say, fully aware of being the only other person in the room.

"Are you number five?"

"I don't think so."

"What does your card say, sir?"

"My-" I look down at a rectangle of paper in my hands. A 5 is direct center, the only marking at all. How long have I been holding this? "Well, I guess I am five."

"Then your interview is scheduled for this very moment, through here." She indicates the door beneath the strip. I rise from the chair and approach the entry way. Just as my hand reaches for the knob, I'm interrupted. "Wait."

"What?" I ask.

"I said wait. The coordinates must be configured to the office hall. I wouldn't suggest opening the door while it is dormant." She smashes a few keys, and then the glass strip above the door shines an artificial green. "You never know where you might end up, but it's safe now. You will find your interviewer in the first room on the left. Good luck!"

"Thanks." I say, pondering many, many things. I push open the door and find myself in an interminable hallway with doors lining the walls as far as I can see, creating a symmetry that gives me chills. I feel like I could walk forever straight. In a smooth manner, I turn to the door at my left and enter. Inside there is a cold looking metal desk, three stacks of papers rising as much as the desk in height. Behind it sits a lone man presumably sitting in a lone chair. But he's not, he motions to a corner where I find another chair. I pull it up to the desk and take a seat. The man is so generic that he's almost invisible, with all the personality of a soccer ball.

"Sorry about this lack of mess." He begins. "You've been summoned at a time of great order and cleanliness. I hope it won't bother you."

"You want me to rip apart and scatter these sheets?" He smiles.

"I am Mr. Z. That's what you can call me. First thing first, I'd like you to know that you're not a lone anymore."

"I'm not?"

"You don't deserve any of that."

"Sometimes I wonder."

"We here at Archware Designs strive to dissolve the notion that you, anyone, has been abandoned. You've simply transcended past it all. It is an inert quality some have, and at some point it releases itself without warning. Now you're going to be a part of something special and advanced. Larger than the world itself."

"I don't understand." I don't understand.

"Have you ever been to the moon?"

"Sure," I answer, "I go there on vacations.

"Ha!" Mr. Z laughs boisterously. "You're a real jokester, you know that?"

"No."

"Well you are, and who couldn't resist? These are the kind of things that make you an Archware VIP. We're coming together, all of us, all that transcend, and are forming a perfect society leaving the rest behind. We're architects and explorers." He leans in a touch closer and continues. "You've been selected to join the Archware Lunar Compound, as employee and resident.

"Huh." Because I couldn't think of a legit response if I tried.

"You're skeptical."

"Probably."

"Well," He says, "How about we pay it a visit?" He stands up-as do I- and rings the receptionist from the door adjacent intercom. "Lunar Compound, please." The receptionist says to wait a moment, as reconfiguration is a more massive process for the moon, I guess. But the green light shines after a handful of seconds. Mr. Z pulls the door open and we step through. It's true. We are surrounded by transparent glass through which the universe could be seen from a whole new perspective. The Earth can be seen in all of it's titanic glory. The floor is white and heavily reflective, like a porcelain mirror. "That's right." Mr. Z says in a response to nothing in particular. "I hope you enjoy long and spacious hallways, cuz we got em." We are in fact facing one right now.

"How exactly did we get here?" I ask.

"Through the door."

"Well sure but-" Cut off.

"You're not giving our doors enough credit, they're just as intelligent as any of us, inanimate Archware residents." It's strange to look through a window and see an atmosphere-less stretch of cosmic rock. Strange and not at all reassuring, not that I need reassurance for anything, the impossible has already proven to be just the opposite.

Things start opening up more as we near a wide pavilion, where I see other people for the first time. It is the intersection of four surrounding halls that take on architecturally maddening shapes and twists and grades and insanity. This room would appear to be the main gathering point of the compound. All walls are still transparent and the floor maintains its shiny-beyond-shinyness quality. The reflections, though, are much busier here. There are benches and other seating apparati freckled sporadically but plentifully through out the area. It is very much like a shopping mall, sans the shopping. Even the clamor of voices sounds structured. An efficient machine here no doubt.

"This is where people tend to conglomerate outside of work, at least for the time being while we are building endless new wings and levels which will eventually annex other astral bodies. Have I briefed you on the work?"

"No."

"It's not hard, easy in fact. Completely simple in fact. In fact in fact. A training course bestows upon you the mechanics of Archware Design Studios. It's the program we use. We never stop expanding, and we never will."

"There's no way I could do that. I don't even know... Like what are w-"

"The single training program will teach you everything about our technology. There will always be more to join the compound, hence the never ending expansion. Soon the moon will not be enough to contain our dream community. No matter our size, though, we will work with one hundred percent efficiency and productivity. We're not that far off from paradise." I just don't know how or with what or by whom all this building is conducted. It doesn't even make sense. I don't know what does anymore. We walked to the center of the plaza and Mr. Z began pointing out the halls, describing what can be found before the expansions. "Commons, mess hall, utility, computers. It's easy. The living quarters' hallway grows as more folks come along., so unfortunately, newer residents find themselves stationed further and further away. But it's not so bad, you get used to all the vastness." We start towards one of the wings, the one that apparently leads to the computers. Not long after the hall got narrow again, I notice a small building like a tool shed beyond the glass a little ways away. It doesn't seem to be connected to this building.

"What's that out there?" I ask.

"Nothing to be concerned with. It's only for authorized personnel, and it's no matter of the citizens. They couldn't get there anyway. The door is locked, and you can't just walk across the moon like that. Commanders have the keys and the suits to keep it as secure as a fortress. But it's really more of a storage shed than anything."

"Huh."

"Now this is what's important." Mr. Z says as we encounter an obscenely large computer lab. Here, endless waves of citizens keep diligently at their designs. It's all so orderly and in sync. "You will get started on this tomorrow. The training goes by like a finger snap, you won't even notice, but just like that you'll be a master of our complex systems."

"When do I start the course?"

"Tonight. Again, you won't even notice. Suppose we should go to your quarters now?"

"Sure." I don't think I have much choice anyway. Mr. Z and I do a 180 and pass through the hall again, my mind fixed on the stand alone building. Even if it doesn't matter to me, it's only natural to be curious. "This all is pretty vast." I started up. "Can't we just use the doors like before?"

"Actually, you can only find one of those doors in the entire compound, in the utility hall where we came in. But I've seen some creative types at work on conveyors and stuff like that to make navigation easier. Efficiency. It's the name of the game."

*****

It happened to be near curfew when Mr. Z's tour was concluded. I find the last room of the endless hall, where there is a surplus of cots for sleeping. I claimed the freshest, sharing the dingy room with four others. The juxtaposition of aesthetic is great. Outside the room everything is of godlike essence, pristine and bright, cleaner than clean. Inside the room is dark even with the lights on. The walls look similar to brick in color and clay in texture. I sit on my cot taking in the lameness.

"You're gonna be sleeping weird tonight, my man." One of the other occupants says to me, disregarding pleasantries of any kind. He has quite short light brown hair that would appear to be well kempt, but any longer and it would be construed as messy. His eyes are harmlessly deranged and though his face isn't too scruffy right now, I imagine his beard grows quickly."You ever take too much melatonin?" In fact I'd never taken any. "It's like that. The training is."

"Is it hard?" I ask.

"Van Kezzle."

"What?"

"That's my name."

"Pretty stupid huh." A thick voice bellows into existence from a man whose largeness stretches beyond physical size.

"Is that your last name, or is it like Van Morrison?"

"I don't believe in last names." Van Kezzle replies.

"They took my name." The large man booms. "Then I named myself Spencer. It's better than the number they gave me. Fourteen? That's not even a name. Maybe eight but not fourteen.

"They took my name too." I say. "So I guess it's Five. Not really that bad, at least it's easy."

"The training isn't hard but you'll be sore." Spencer says. "You don't do anything but experience it. And you drift in and out of the experience to a lot of hellish places not always identifiable as places. The training masks itself as a dream segment, and when you wake, it's all just dream images to you. I guess it's for safety."

"Huh." I enunciate my catchphrase.

"Might as well hit the hay anyway." Spencer declares, and everyone in the room unanimously decides to go to sleep. We could better acquainted tomorrow.