Read Online Arcane II by Nathan Shumate (Editor) - Free Book Online Page B

gone. There’s a white silk thread on your tie.
    You shake the girl out of your mind and step past the hazy brass doors to the elevator bank. You won’t find your room down here; maybe the residential floors can give you more assistance. You’re surprised to have an elevator all to yourself in this crowded convention. You look to the bank of buttons, but each one is blank. Not worn, but blank. An array of soft yellow tabs staring at you like sightless fish eyes. You count from the top––one, two, three––and on to the next row until you reach number 22 and press that. If you are wrong, you figure you can check the floor when you get there and orient yourself after.
    The doors hum closed and you feel the floor shudder and shift. After a moment, they slide open. You notice the room is hemmed with potted plants and realize that, aside from the ferns, the room looks very much the same as the one you just left. That’s when you realize that it doesn’t look the same. It is the same. You’ve come back to the lobby.
    You step back into the elevator car, thinking perhaps that you should count the buttons from the bottom instead, and that’s what you do. When the ride is over, you face the exit––of the lobby. You hail another bellman. “Excuse me, these elevators don’t seem to let me go up.”
    “That’s because they aren’t elevators,” the bellman says in a bored tone, as if you are the dumbest person alive.
    “They aren’t?”
    “No. Those are perspectivators.”
    “What?”
    “Perspectivators. They take you to the same place, but open at a different angle. It allows you to achieve a new perspective.” His clinically snobbish tone reminds you of an art curator, or a wine expert.
    “That’s––”
    “You see, to have an elevator would presuppose that some floors, some rooms, some places are superior to others. That you have to be elevated to get to them. That means, by default, that the other floors, the ‘lower’ ones, are some how to be viewed as inferior. By using perspectivators rather than elevators, we can circumvent that and reach a lateral union of all floors. We’re the only hotel that has them, you know. Very au courant. ”
    “Yes. But how do I get to the upper floors?”
    “Uh uh. Not upper floors. Other floors. Other floors.”
    Maybe you are the dumbest person alive. You thank him and look for some stairs. Even an idiot can manage the stairs. You don’t want the plush carpeted staircase leading up to the second lobby and the bar, not yet anyways, you want the concrete stairs that will take you to the next floor. You follow the signs past the bathrooms and you duck in the unadorned door, hoping no one spots you.
    Three flights up you realize you have yet to see a door leading out. You climb another flight and there are still no floor numbers, no indicators that you’ve moved at all. You remember a video game you watched your nephew play where if you didn’t follow the level in the exact right pattern, you were doomed to repeat the same endless hallway until the pixelated hero ran out of time and died a shame-faced eight-bit death. You retreat down a flight and find a dining room chair in one corner. You look over your shoulder and there’s a door. Your nephew would be proud.
    You wish for a chunky video-game NEXT LEVEL tag hanging above the scene, but you’re back in the lobby. You’re too tired to fight it anymore and look for the baggage claim. Maybe there’s something in your suitcase that you can part with as a wedding gift. Maybe one of those neckties you were never particularly fond of to begin with, like that paisley one that always seems out of place but was too expensive to throw out. You silently vow to become a hermit when you get out of here, to never again be swayed by current trends. You swear it, if you get out of here.
    Your suitcase is waiting for you by that panel as if the disembodied arm knew you’d be coming. At least somebody knows what’s going on,