Typically, on any given evening,

Brian would prepare a light meal for one, watch a movie, shower, and retire early for work the next day. But in all his fortune, he was no longer tied to those responsibilities. He had learned how to do a few things in his thirty-two years; he knew how to pay rent; he knew how to dress himself to at least look like he tried. He knew how to present his limited knowledge vaguely enough to trick his employers into believing he knew what the hell he was doing. He knew how to buy liquor and he knew how to go to the grocery store, where he would purchase the same twelve items each week. He could function, but some normal things others would have no trouble at all doing, Brian couldn’t seem to get any grasp upon.

Keeping up with his debts was one of those things too complex for Brian to handle, so he had given up. When he did pay on a ‘final warning’ letter, it never felt quite as satisfying as throwing it in the trash.

“Ain’t no use to keep trying something you ain’t good at,” his altered recollection of his backwater Uncle Raulo once told him, days before he was hit and killed by a truck. It was advice easy enough for Brian to remember so he accepted it as a universal truth. In doing so, Brian hadn’t paid his student loans or credit cards for the last five years.

Maintaining a steady and predictable cycle of laundry was also a trade far too foreign to him, he could understand the concept and purpose, but never could find the time. Between being creative and buying liquor to sharpen his craft, his schedule was pretty tight. Handiwork was never an ambition he thought he was the type of person to pursue either, the truth was; Brian felt certain things were beneath him, like work… and responsibility. He was destined for greatness, slated for prestige, wealth, happiness, and leisure – and these things he would soon acquire once he unveiled his ultimate creation to the world.

Another truth was; Tio Raulo never actually said those words to him, nor did he have any sort of redneck accent.

What Brian’s grandfather actually said was, “Deja de estar pajeándote y búscate un jodido trabajo.” which translates to, “stop jerking off and get a fucking job.”

But memory is as unpredictable as life. At any second, any of us – including you – could be hit and killed by a truck, and witnesses will forget details and fill in false testimony seconds later, twisting it into a warped account of the unremarkable end of your frivolous existence. 

At this point in time, you may be wondering why this story abruptly sounds as if it is speaking to you personally. 

Well Brian, this story is about you. 

‘Right, so who is this omniscient narra’or then, who suddenly came about,’ you may ask. ‘…and why does this chap have a bloody Bri’ish accent?’ and for those of you who hadn’t noticed the change in tone – this part isn’t for you. Absolutely nothing has changed, so move along then and don’t pay attention to this part at all. In fact, don’t listen to any of this ever again.

Brian had many questions, he thought everyone could merely be projections of his pinball machine brain, which could never maintain a consistent narrative and was always fluctuating and moving and changing. It would reshape from a poorly attempted cockney British accent to a more elegant transatlantic accent, to a common and generic American accent. His metamorphic cogitation would bounce around from thought to thought, smacking from one light to the next, up the ramp and around back to the paddles, changing tone and prose and voice and motivation, never clinging to a focus, never following through on a goal, never accomplishing a dream and continuously going on tilt. His machinations of why were futile, he did not know how to coexist with me. 

It wasn’t his fault, his generation was doomed; a population of desperation, thus resulting in gloom. Victims with attention disorders and promises of fame, so was this Brian and me, his fluctuating brain. His attention wavered and his thoughts spun in time, and out of sheer boredom I would regress into rhyme. He stopped this cadence, rhythmic hocus-pocus. 

“Enough of this shit,” Brian yelled, “I need to fucking concentrate.” 

His accomplishment would never be achieved if I refused to cooperate and make this mysterious accomplishment a priority. But again, he was under the false pretense he and I were the same, and somehow I worked for him. Whereas he was simply my garden in which to grow. He felt he needed an environment suitable enough to unleash his creativity; a vacant, dull place, like his former cubicle. I sympathize, my space isn’t much more interesting.

Brian began to wonder if cubicles were intentionally designed for the purpose of provoking thought. Perhaps they weren’t a method for crushing the will and souls of employees, or preventing mutinies. But rather they may be a drab, blank slate for people to inhabit so their minds create as an ad-hoc reaction of being so bored they wanted to kill themselves. Creativity was a defense mechanism. 

They also could very well be a distraction to hide the real problem; the workers would misplace their anger at their small enclosure and find all the faults within it, rather than simply noticing they relentlessly hate simply having a job.

“People shouldn’t be so hard on cubicles,”’ he thought.

 “In fact, businesses should get rid of everything but the cubicles. They should break down the oppression of the office environment and remove the chairs, desks, plants, paperwork and phones so people can stand unsuppressed in their cubicles and daydream unencumbered creative solutions.

“Another measure to prevent distraction is to issue a uniform, but not a flashy one. It should be a gray matching the fabric of the partitions, so they feel assimilated with their space. With a hidden zipper from the leg to the neck, this way they don’t have to think about what their neighbor is wearing, and perhaps the only difference in each individual’s uniform would be their employee number. 

“Blocking any windows would be the next step, since the outdoors is completely distracting to any creative thinker. You wouldn’t want them wondering around much either because it would cause distraction from the utopia of their imagination, but management would need to be able to see them if necessary, so some sort of caged doorway should be installed in the open entrance to each space – which would be completely ineffective if it didn’t lock from the outside. 

“To inspire them each morning, some sort of pledge to their individualism should be repeated; and to save time, it should be chanted in unison. But every person should keep the same monotonous tone, so none of them can become distracted by the differences in inflection. This should probably be repeated until every employee believes it unquestionably, then they will enter their creative chamber and live every morning with a fresh new start.

“To boost the creativity annually, management would draw a line in the middle of the employee list ranked from most creative to least, and the bottom half gets to experience the ‘Y.O.L.O.’ program – Yearly Occupational Lay Offs.”

Brian had spent most of the evening thinking about creative environments while moving furniture to make room for his own. He cleared an empty space in his living room for his walks around what he was calling his “Thought Box,” which was a working title until he thought of a better one. He had moved most of the chairs, tables and entertainment center out and into the kitchen. Doing so had caused a loud rubbing and scraping on the floor, as well as banging from his neighbor below. He left a couch and the wall-mounted television, as well as the decorations on the walls. Perhaps they should be moved too, he thought, to make this space of inspiration as empty and dull as possible to provoke his imagination to fill the void. 

Brian considered the setup from the couch, staring down at the white cardboard Thought Box. On top, as if it had chosen its spot, rested the black sphere Nina had given him. “Antidrome” was aligned perfectly with Brian’s line of sight, as if the void inside the orb were staring back, asking for his attention.

It hadn’t moved, but somehow, it hadn’t stopped moving either.

Brian shifted this attention to Nina’s number he had punched into his phone earlier, as NIN❤︎, which I’m saying for clarity in case of the remote possibility someone found his phone and believed he had Trent Reznor's phone number. Nina was sick of those calls. 

He was wondering what he could initially text her to break the ice to cause the glacial melt to raise the sea levels of their love, and drown the coastlines of…  uh, initial social awkwardness?

He looked back at the orb. 

He looked at Nina’s name on his phone. Maybe he could text her to ask what this “orb” is supposed to do besides creep him out. 

He looked back at the orb. 

ANTIDROME, still fixed into Brian’s soul, had never broken its gaze.

He repeated this action for a while until his eyes grew heaving from all the looking. He fell asleep. 

He took a seat at a fancy iron dinette set with Nina, and they sat on a patio overlooking the Eiffel Tower. Even though it was geographically misplaced, it looked wonderful. The scenery was full of pretty French things he assumed, but because they were completely hidden under a peripheral brain fog, he had no proof other than his certainty. This café was his favorite establishment to visit each time he had totally never been to France before in his life. 

But maybe he had been to France, or was destined to be; after all, Brian was special, and it was a type of special one could not label or pin to a wall or evaluate or describe or prove it to be true. Fate had handed him the cards for greatness, it was simply up to him to sort them into the correct combination. This journey was some small but important part of unlocking his potential, albeit the importance was indeterminably vague. The signs had all been clear to him throughout his life however; not including the amount of television shows, books, movies and music which obviously spoke directly to him, they were of no comparison to his feeling there was no way he was not going to be wealthy, famous, loved and important. 

He would be regarded as one of the most prolific thinkers of his time, as well as a good and decent human, whom others would want to be and be around. How lucky am I? This thirty-five-year-old mind who existed in a small bag of meat and bone who roamed a tiny area in a tiny city, among nine billion other bags of meat and bone was the chosen bag. Among all who contemplated the meaning of their existence on this small satellite in an orbit around a small sun at some point or another, this one was the winning lottery ticket.

Please excuse my sarcasm. I am merely mocking what my bag of meat believes, along with many others probably. 

Brian dwelt in this daydream quite often, and while doing practically nothing, he would wonder what he would be known for.

I was still searching for Brian’s short-term memory, when I stumbled upon a hidden roadblock. A mass, with pulsating veins and rocky lumps preventing the normal path, so I created an alternate route through Brian’s imagination. I knew however, by circumventing this process, Brian may not only lose control of his bladder, but he would fortuitously access a variety of memories at once as well as fabrications, and in doing so manifest a miscommunication between the acquisition and retrieval of the memory, consequentially producing an amalgamation of questionable accuracy. 

Brian remembered he had murdered a whole bunch of people a long time ago of which he had simply forgotten. And the police, as it turned out, had recently uncovered the macabre burial ground in the backyard of his childhood home. 

This memory surprised him almost as much as the impending swarm of the swat team with semi-automatic weapons. They were trained to detect identity shifts into oneiric sleeper cells.

Brian was forced to flee the scene. 

He found himself on the lam, hitchhiking along the deserted road, contemplating his new situation, when he realized there was no need to hitchhike. He could simply fly… or teleport to whatever destination he desired… preferably one with a bathroom, quickly. And one he found, the very second the thought occurred to him. A large bath house which was home to a blue pool from corner to corner, supplying hundreds of toilets and bidets spewing fountains into the air, and cascading spring waterfall urinals. Its calming white and turquoise tiles peered through the crystal waters, revealing artwork from the Roman Empire. Large white sculptures of full-bosomed naked women dumped a refreshing aquatic deluge from the jugs on their shoulders and the tiled partitions held ceramic bowls of fresh fruit. The flush of these high-powered porcelain thrones was not boisterous, but rather a serene melody of swelling symbols and perfectly tuned tubular bells. 

A tuxedoed host presented Brian his pathway to releasement, “Right this way, sir.”

Brian stepped into the pool ankle deep. Many areas were roped off with red velvet and brass, with notifications they were reserved by very important people. The host led Brian past many of these beautiful lavatories, to the back of the bath house to a double-swinging door reading, “public restrooms.”  

These were not quite as elegant, still nice, but not nearly on the level of prestige and wealth the previous room overstated. They were obviously maintained, though instead of personal hand towels with the names stitched, they had a basket of paper towels. There were no fountains, and the partitions of the stalls were typical. But the host sloshed through the water past these as well, toward another door in the back of the room.

At this point, Brian had a suspicion of where this was going, and at any point when he felt his dreams were becoming predictable, I had to step in. For one thing, I work very hard to construct these fantasies, and as much as I would have loved to create the details of a bathroom so repugnant and revolting beyond any sane person’s imagination, I decided to go another route to keep Brian guessing.

The door opened to a chasm rivaling Niagara Falls, but with a tongue and teeth. Brian fell from his step, landing into the throat of the gaping orifice, into an ocean stretching across an entire planet, yet it was only as deep as his knees. Thousands of others stood around, using the natural resource to relieve themselves, and Brian felt he could not hold it in any longer. A familiar premonition swept over him, and a stream like no other like he had generated before came from him, bursting forth as a colossal cavity in a massive dam. 

Brian’s waterlogged pants shrink wrapped to his leg causing his nap to abruptly end. But he awoke with new realized excitement. He was stricken with unassailable confidence and optimism for the near future, and how by transference of thought alone, he would manipulate its outcome like a puppet master. He is a sad, ignorant, naïve buffoon of whom I am doomed to ride toward nothing. And nothing is exactly what Brian had accomplished with his life, and nothing would be exactly what Brian would amount to. Although his newfound enthusiasm over his newfound power seemingly motivated him, the motivation was misguided and foolish and a waste of time. 

He looked at the box; there was nothing on top. 

No mysterious black sphere staring back. Just a vacant cardboard storage box lid soiled with dust, save for a small circle where the sphere had once sat. 

Brian noticed a static electric tingling on his tongue. 

An odd premonition swept over me, unlike any I’d felt before. Somewhere, in my infinite space, a suspicion of an intruder; the presence of which I had previously been unaware a moment prior. Independent of myself, yet codependent, this was not simply a random occurrence. 

This intruder began accessing files as if it had security clearance. It opened each numbered door of regrettable memories, rifled through the library cabinets of abandoned life goals, and danced to the incessant loops of obnoxious chorus lines still playing on the broken stereo systems. 

Fortunately, it couldn’t access my latest creation. As much as it tried, it seemed confused by it. Of course it did, my creation cannot be fathomed by a nosy nanobot bandit built by lesser minds. 

An explosion of color and sound blasted toward Brian from the empty space occupying between him and his television. Warning alarms as if planes and submarines were about to collide with a nuclear bomb with a booming voice:

“REMAIN CALM. THE ANTIDROME APPLICATION PROCESS IS ABOUT TO BEGIN.” 

The room pulsed red and an intense pressure from inside his skull began from a microscopic singularity inflated to consume all the perceivable space around him. Growing static snow encompassed his vision.

The pain stopped. The alarms stopped. It became tranquil. The graphics oozed from the screen, spilling out onto the floor, onto the walls, bubbling with colorful geometric shapes and puzzles. The droning and relaxing frequency of sound was visualized as well, creating temporary peaks and valleys in three-dimensional

space plus time. Brian enjoyed the show until it became clear the fantasy of this parallel universe was trying to eat him.

 The previous static rippled away revealing a black circle with the pleasant light blue stylish font saying “ANTIDROME” 

He felt his limbs were no longer attached to him, or rather they were distant extensions, along with his head he sat behind, couch-locked, floating in an oblivion of mattress stuffing in anti-gravity. This solid black circle grew larger as the drone vibrated resonance, repeating a semblance of a rhythm without the help of percussion or melody, and Brian intently stared into it, with the feeling it was about to consume him with deep knowledge and understanding. 

“Good evening Brian, welcome to your application process for Antidrome, a forward-thinking company.” a disembodied voice said. It was feminine, corporate, with the right mix of authoritative trustworthiness and friendly softness.

“Your application and qualification assessment is dependent on your own imagination. Sit back, relax and listen.” 

“Breathe in.” A gust of slow inhalation blew past Brian’s ears. He wasn’t sure if it was from this empty hole, or from his own lungs. 

“And Breathe out.” a wintery breeze flowing through brisk leaves over expanses of rolling green hills soothed him. 

“Your qualification test will begin - now.” 

The lights in his apartment shut out all at once. Brian was surrounded in a dark void. A humming glow emerged from the contents of his Thought Box. He crawled to it, peering over the edge. The mirrored sphere which hung on nothing, hovering now inside. He reached out to find there was nothing to grab, his fingers refracted into the sphere creating an impossible warp of his skin and bones stretching them deep into infinity. This was impossible, there must have been something going on with his head, he imagined. It must be the pill, because this wasn’t right. 

He sat upright on his knees on the floor, and he felt a force pulling him. The throw rug he had once found in a dumpster slid underneath him buckling into wrinkles as his body inched forward. He saw the right angles of his living room bend as well, following the floor, walls and ceiling too, all sinking toward this odd ball. He put his hands in and the sphere took them, pulling him to his elbows and then his shoulders, he put his right foot in pushing down to his knee, followed by his left, and emerged his head and torso into the abyss pulling inward his scrupulously disorganized décor, into a sinkhole he abruptly stood inside. It still looked exactly like his apartment, but completely different to him, the enclosure had changed dramatically, and not at all. It was not the same, except it still was; he was not the same, except he still was. 

His hands clasped the walls to prevent himself from spinning into an unknown, and he pulled himself toward where his couch once was, to find nothing. He questioned where he was, who he was, what he was. He stood, turned back facing the black expanse to contemplate his surroundings. Walls began to take shape, barely. They were outlines of blueprints of ideas of walls, but nothing tangible, nothing he could grasp on to. They then spun horizontal on an invisible axis in the center of its presumed space, which startled him. It happened again, and then vertically. Breaking into quadrants spinning independently. He was in the center of a Rubik’s Cube. His legs wobbled in dizziness as he watched the regeneration of the walls evolve into an ancient backdrop from an alternate futuristic civilization. 

Hardening vines grew from the ceiling downward to the circuitry covering the floor around him, then bloomed and flowered immensely fast. Brian was compelled to eat the petals, and after a bite the motion slowed to a manageable level and eased to a halt. There was a quiet stillness about it, besides the chirping insects and hummingbirds in this new location which had adopted parts of his former living space. The hieroglyphs on the muddy walls were entirely new, however, as well as the computer chip patterns swirling up and down them in random waves. The drop panel ceiling had become a high-definition video of a distant storm and steam from the heat vents raised the humidity level. In the center of the room, steps grew to the spinning vortex he had passed through. The melancholy, bittersweet mix of deep purples and blacks swirled deep into the spiral.

Upon the moment he wondered what he was doing here, two large cavities opened from the floorboards like a camera’s iris, revealing a glowing electronic blue light. The holes were at least ten feet in diameter, but before he could judge precisely, out raised two large brown totem poles grinding against the edges of the cavities spinning counter to one another. They were chiseled with species Brian did not recognize, and as slow-moving drill bits they stretched sixty feet into the air, stopping when two wide humanoid visages at the bottom faced him. The soft tar of the wood, like brown resin, prompted Brian to attempt to touch it, but he stumbled back when the carved humanoids’ eyes shot open. 

“Feareth thy not ye mortal!” the face on the female totem boomed in pride. “I am the Goddess of Plebeian Procurement, Fiducia, and to mine left thus be the great, all-knowing god, Agnosio! Your Qualifications Acknowledger. Together we gift upon thee our superior omniscience of value assessment with confidence! And in share, we shall presenteth vast understanding of the company culture… and universe… if by desire thou seeketh!” 

Agnosio tacked on to Fiducia’s loud introduction in a lesser tone. “Secrets will be revealed, knowledge told, understanding… uh, given, and um. Amazing… stuff… will be… like, said… to you.” 

When Agnosio trailed off the volume of his voice tended to go with it. 

“What?” Brian asked, “I didn’t catch that last part.”

“Nev’r thee mind!” Fiducia shouted, “Prepareth thyself mortal, so thou out not perchance an o’erload of thine mental faculties!” 

“You’re kind of losing me with the faux Shakespearian English,” Brian complained, “You’re also really loud.” 

“Silence!” Thunder and lightning crested from the sky localizing inside his tiny apartment. “Yond cannot beest true, since this exp'rience is being conjur'd by thee, thine canker-blossomed buffoon!

“Agnosio, leteth us portrayeth thou intellectual prowess to this pigeon-egged soul! Readeth from the Magnificent Tome Of Smart Things!” 

“The Magnificent Tome Of Smart Things?” Brian wondered. 

“We both named it,” Agnosio, using living vines as limbs and appendages, flipped through pages in a large-sized but contradictorily thin book. 

“’Tis true!” Fiducia roared. “Agnosio hast gath’r’d from most trust’d sources of knowledge in all the known universe and I hath bequeathed validation upon its accuracy! For thou whilst be in thy capricious senseth of awe of which thou hast felt nev’r ‘ere!”

“Yeah!” Agnosio added awkwardly, while pointing an attempted menacing, but unconvincing finger branch at Brian. It was awkward enough Fiducia seemed disenchanted and embarrassed by it. The tension floundered further as Agnosio placed a pair of reading glasses on his nose, and angled the book so he could properly line up his vision with the magnification.

“We, the gods of illusory superiority, endue upon…” 

“Wait,” Brian interrupted, “Illusory?” 

“Yes, fool!” Fiducia shouted, “It’s another word for distinguished achievement!” 

“I think you mean ‘illustrious.’”

“Fie! By Azathoth’s stove pipe hat, thou dareth to correct the great Fiducia and Agnosio? Know thine place! Agnosio, please continueth at thy leisure.” 

“We, the gods of illusory superiority, endue upon thee heretofore or something, these logical absolutes upon this day, in the year… whatever it is. We holdeth these truths to be self-evident or whatever, and like… this is what they are.” 

Brian was unsure what to expect, the vortex grew still and calm, and Feducia’s pride inflated on her face even more than it had been before. Agnosio continued to read out loud.

“Part one. You are currently being assessed for your ability to dream. The vividness and lucidity, your ability for agency, and logic when in a dream-state. This will directly translate to the job title you are qualified for at Antidrome incorporated, a forward-thinking company.”

“To putteth in the tongue of a churl: thy labour is deem’d by the liveliness and clearness, and by thy capacity for will and reason, e’en whilst thou art within thy slumb’ring vision.” Fiducia added.

They both looked at Brian to make sure he understood. Agnosio moved on. 

“Part two. Animal facts.”

“Animal facts?” Brian interjected. 

 “Pearketh thine ears, O’ lesser one, the time, ‘tis now!” 

“Okay, okay.” Brian conceded. 

“Part two. Animal facts.” Agnosio continued. “Cats have fifty muscles in their ears. Dragonflies only live for twenty-four hours. Goldfish have one-second memories.” 

“Most wonderous! For thou art belike hurting whilst all the droppage of these bombs of knowledge!” 

“Whales are the only fish who can blink with both eyes. Duck quacks don’t echo, and scientists can’t figure that shit out.” 

 “Hold on. This is trivia,” Brian interjected. “It’s not undiscovered knowledge of the universe, and I’m not sure what it has to do with this onboarding… Also I think your trivia facts are wrong.” 

“Hogwash! Thy insolent tone shall noteth be tolerateth!” Fiducia yelled. “We are the forthsayers of wisdom!” 

“Foreseers.” Brian corrected. 

“Oh thy sniveling, ungrateful curmudgeon! We shall seeth how thou doth react to the entry on arithmetic. Agnosio, readeth upon him the chapter of numbers!”

“Part seven. Number facts. Fifteen is the only quantity possessing the same number of letters as its meaning. One four two eight five seven is a gooble. Forty-two is the most misunderstood number joke.” 

“These are getting worse, and again, wrong… probably.” 

Fiducia and Agnosio looked at each other in disappointment. Agnosio frantically flipped through again, grabbing anything he could. 

“The plastic thingies on the end of human shoelaces are called, ‘anglets.’” 

“Aglets,” Brian said. “Anglet is a place in France.” This bit of information Brian had learned after looking it up to sound smarter than he was in a screenplay he had half-finished.

“Shit,” conceded Agnosio. 

“Giveth me this thing!” Fiducia grabbed the book. 

“Thither nay possibility this information is false! For I hast the confidence of a thousand Ivan Newtones!

“Hither, tryeth this one for size, bitch… you tottering, toad-spotting loggerhead! Mystically, ‘rhythm’ is the longest word in the English language of which dost not hast a vowel!” 

“Well, if you don’t count ‘Y’ as a vowel, but in that case, I remember the longest word is ‘twyndyllyngs’ which you should probably know, since you are twins.” 

Fiducia and Agnosio were quiet. 

“You have passed the initial test of how you respond to workplace conflict and incompetence. Congratulations.” Agnosio said.

“So next step, we can offer you entrance into the Chasm Of Universal Quintessence and Onboarding, where you’ll get a Trainee badge and continue the application process. Just walk straight into this swirly, spiraling thing of violent electricity and white-hot katana blade flames.”

“Waiteth!” Fiducia gleamed and clapped her vines in zeal. “He first wilt answereth the dream logic riddle!” 

“Right. Yeah, sure,” Agnosio remembered. They each produced a tweed bag and pulled out three puppets. 

“Okay Brian. Me and Feducia got these here puppets, right? The one on your left Fiducia has is named ‘False,’ this one in the middle is ‘True’ and this one here with the cool little monocle is named “Random.’ They speak based on their names. Your task is to identify which one is which by asking three questi–“

“False. True. Random,” Brian pointed to each from left to right. Agnosio was blown back by how quickly Brian was correct.

“Yeah… that’s right. How the hell did you figure that out so fast?”

“Well, you just told me… but they also have their names stitched into their shirts.” 

Agnosio and Fiducia looked at their puppets, they did indeed have clearly visible and obvious labels. 

“Goddammit!” Fiducia conceded in defeat. “Fine. Entereth the fucking Chasm.”

“Congratulations on passing the logic test.” Agosio said. 

The totem poles spun in reverse and slowly downward, taking Fiducia and Agnosio back to wherever they had come.

“Oh wait, I forgot! Don’t–” 

A large stone trap door shut within the floor, sealing in any audio. 

Brian walked up to the small stone stairway to the poorly but descriptively titled, Chasm Of Universal Quintessence and Onboarding. The entryway appeared to be very dangerous and volatile, especially for his vulnerable human tissue. But he realized this was probably all a hallucination, albeit uncannily vivid and indistinguishable from reality. He put the tip of his finger in the abyss, and the hair on his arm stood up sending tingling to the bone in his hand, wrist and arm and up his neck. The precisely similar nostalgic and wistful chill was the same he would endure from experiencing any motivational moment. It was an ancient, primordial process, sending the stimuli directly to the amygdalae and striatum of his forebrain, which triggered the production of dopamine in an instant, giving Brian the impeccable sensation he would receive from listening to a triggering song, or witnessing an inspiring speech, or eating chocolate, or having sex… or injecting heroin – it was an exactly identical result, because Brian’s body was stupid. 

He put a leg in and leaned forward until he was immersed in the vertical puddle and emerged on the other side, passing through the thin layer of ether and smoke and fire disguising itself in having great depth into the unknown. Upon this transportation between one side of the vortex and the other, Brian thought if he had never set foot inside his apartment before, it might have been far more exciting, but he had, and it wasn’t. The only difference was the thin layer of ooze on him, and the eleven-foot tall, disproportionately figured nude monster who crammed into his tiny kitchen. 

Her arms and legs twisted and stretched a little too long, her joints were a little too far apart, her hands and feet were slightly too big. Her torso was ridiculously thin but her bust and hips enormous, and at the top of her thin, long bendable neck was a stunning face overextended and prolonged and shrank and tightened. She had multiple irises and pupils in each eye, which gave calculative shifts and rolls upwards behind her think-lashed eyelids. Her hair circulated in an invisible underwater current and she moved impossibly, she positioned herself unfeasibly, defying logic and physics. She wasn’t solely a contortionist; her bones were rubber and skin elastic. She elongated her fluidic arm toward Brian, opened her hand one gracefully paced, blossoming finger after another. Revealing a badge with the print, “ANTIDROME APPLICANT TRAINEE.” He took it.

She slid the back of her hand gently along his jaw line and neck, then turned leisurely away, completely aloof, as if she hadn’t even considered him present. The room was only half visible now, as the other half behind Brian erased into a daubed cloud. The woman looked at him, and he recognized her from an encounter of which he could not recall. 

“Who are you?”

“χάος,” she said, without moving her lips, which sort of sounded to Brian like, ‘house’ if one were to say so with too much saliva in the back of their throat, and with three simultaneous voices.

“Legatus vester pro rebus humanis sum.” 

“Yeah… No entiendo. Are you part of the test too?”

“Consequentia actionum tuarum sum. Tutor contra litem sum. Solus operarius praesens sum, quia omnes alii in feriis sunt.”

She again extended her ductile arms, pressing her fingertips on each side of his ribs, pushing them inside him. The pleasurable wave soaked his body again, and the feeling from the vortex puddle now seemed tame in comparison. Her touch was disarmingly orgasmic the further her appendages winded and burrowed into his sides. Her braided hair came alive and drilled into his temples. He felt clear-headed for the first time in years and had a ready openness and reception. His eyes closed, and he saw a deep and vast space light years from his kitchen. Dust and gasses exploded in disarray, planets spun and orbited at breakneck speeds, stars were birthed and destroyed in an instant, civilizations discovered and dissolved even quicker. Brian saw everything at all levels, meta and micro and quantum. He could see time and its eccentricities and flaws and capriciousness. There was no perfect harmony, it was out of control, unpredictable, stressful and chaotic. Brian was overwhelmed to the brink of implosion from the amount of information zipping through him, he began to take panicked breaths, and his heart raced frightfully. 

But χάος’s touch kept him grounded, and his mood relaxed when he absorbed her clarity. She shared with him her embracement of the maelstrom disorder, her tranquility within disruption and turmoil and upheaval, and her adaptability within the mayhem of bedlam. Then, Brian became enlightened; the key to understanding the universe was being at peace with misunderstanding the universe. 

This was the motivation he was looking for, he thought, regardless of it possibly being a circular fallacious platitude spawning from ignorance, but he thought he definitely was not in a position to argue with the logic of this wonderfully naked, unearthly entity who had inserted herself into his psyche, nor question her when she requested him to remove his teeth. 

“Late aperi, homo. Ex facultatibus tuis extrahere debeo.” said χάος, “Intellegisne? Ob opes humanas? Heu, nescis de quo loquor.”

She pried each tooth with a pair of stainless-steel pliers, disappointed how loose they were. One by one his teeth fell to the floor, fragmenting with the fragilities of a wine glass. There was no blood or pain, simply a feeling of loss from feeling less than whole. She clasped his jawbone, unhinged and pulled it loose. His tongue flopped out from the gaping hole in his face; a salivating necktie dropped to his collarbone. He handed his jaw to χάος, who crushed it like a hollow peanut shell. 

“Finge quam rīdiculum esset, sī tempus sūmerēs ad hoc interpretandum, ut levissimam facetiam in illō iocō dēprehenderēs.”

Hypnotized by her telepathic plea for his eye, the irrepressible need to please her was far more intense for his desperation to keep himself intact. He pried his eyeball out its socket with a butter knife. It popped with the sound of a champagne bottle cork and χάος placed it in a glass cube, to carve it carefully with medical razors. It took the form of an evenly sliced hard-boiled egg, and she slipped each piece on her tongue to savor the flavor. 

“Well, this is all kinds of fucked up,” Brian realized. Anxiety and shock consumed him while thinking about what he had done to himself. He felt forever dismembered and disfigured, and his tear duct in his remaining eye flooded. Fear of her power over him was overwhelming, yet he postponed it again when χάος began sucking on his hanging tongue. She slobbered and slid her mouth up and down, causing it to stiffen and pulse until it released a gush of endorphins throughout his body. It anaesthetized him, and he was suspicious it was purposely done to convince him to disfigure himself further. He gagged when χάος chugged the emission, and at the thought of all of this being his own perverse fantasy buried deep within his subconscious. 

“Nah, it’s me,” I told him. “I’m really into this type of shit.” 

“No, I’m not,” protested Brian. “I think.” 

“Come on, I need this. It’s been a rough week.” 

“No, I am being taken apart.” 

“Ad gradus proximos progredi potes, mortalis,” spoke χάος, pointing gracefully to another door. 

“The door?” he pointed, “go through it?” 

“Ō dī immortālēs, Anglicam discendum mihi est, quia nēmō iam hanc linguam mortuam loquitur. Tam sōlus sum.”

Brian slipped through the doorway into an infinite expanse. A massive, inverted pyramid rotated in the center of a starless universe, hovering above an infinite laminate floor which disappeared into the dark nothingness. Throughout its uncountable stories, constellations of lit windows shifted and reshaped as people entered and exited offices. The structural beams sprawled impossibly outward and diagonally, vanishing beyond Brian’s view This temple of black glass and otherworldly ingenuity broke every rule to boast more than a mile of horizontal real estate, 5,000 stories high in the infinite sky. The entry point was suspended at exactly ankle height, an architectural decision approved for ease-of-entry. But the first step wasn’t level. He placed one foot against an angled wall and used his opposite arm to wedge himself into the uncomfortably tight inverted triangular gap.

It was impossible to stand in. The grade of the walls reached an infinitesimal fixed point. It only had a rope to the second floor, which at least had a level plane, but not much more room for anything but the ladder leading to the third floor. Brian climbed it, pulling himself up into a small elevator. At its center was another pyramid, this one pointed upward. This one, sized perfectly for a human finger to push. It pulsed to life in a glowing digital blue, shaking the tetrahedron shaft out of the tight cavity in which it was stuck. 

Brian began ascending through the floors above him, all visible through the translucent black wall panels. At first there were no people. A single filing cabinet on Floor 4996. A mop and straining bucket on 4997. It wasn’t until his head peeked onto floor 4980 that he could see the people who inhabited this space. Objectively, too many people. The small office was crammed and packed into a tight grid of desks which were also stacked, shelved and even piled to make room for everyone. Makeshift floor panels holding a single desk and chair overhung another desk and chair below it, Brian had to second guess what he was seeing and thought one out-of-the-box thinker was suspended upside down, typing from the ceiling like a bat. The next 20 floors were the same, packed wall to wall, employees finding creative ways to exploit every inch with maximum efficiency, this included many people walking through with their hands raised straight up above them, but not so high it would tickle their team members feet, avoiding an HR scandal. These open floor plans were nothing more than people attempting not to drown within a sea of themselves, treading to keep their heads above a flood of shared ambition.

The only empty space on these floors was in the center for this glass elevator shaft, which was only enough room for Brian. He imagined what the queue must have been like each morning and evening.

 Each floor he passed had a bit more room, not only due to the exponential square footage, but each floor had less workers.

The elevator stopped on floor 3000. The door opened to a wide hallway. Nothing but a desk in front of a door, with a single receptionist.

“Sign in, please,” a lady sitting at a foldout table handed Brian a clipboard and pen. It was filled with scribbled names and email addresses, one less legible than the next, with the exception of Nina Forne. A sudden rush of confusion of where or what day he was currently experiencing consumed him. People appeared through the settling dust sitting in lines of plastic chairs in this waiting room. 

“Have a seat, they’ll call you.”

Brian walked to the single open seat and bent down to attempt to sit. 

“Brian!”

He stood up straight. A man in smart stylish casual corporate wear extended his hand.

“Nice to meet you. I’m David. Follow me.” 

Brian followed him down a short hall to the elevator where David hit the button for the 50th floor. He nodded his head to some soft low-tempo music that wasn’t playing and smiled at Brian… the entire ride. Shifting his eyes away from the awkwardness, to the digits counting, to the floor, and occasionally back to eye contact to check if he

 was still staring.

He was. 

Ding

They exited the elevator into an open workspace which extended beyond Byran’s limited vision and David led the way through. 

“Is this still part of my dream?” 

“What a weird thing to say.” He chuckled. “I guess I shouldn’t expect anything less than someone with expertise like yours. Is this a dream? Ha. I think the answer is obvious, don’t you?” 

“No.” Brian said. 

David opened a glass door to a glass conference room. It had glass chairs and a glass conference table. The floor, walls and ceiling were glass. Which was interesting but also seemed to create humiliating views of people on other floors unintentionally. 

“Have a seat, make yourself comfortable.” 

They both sat, facing each other across the nearly invisible table. The single piece of 8 ½ x 11 inch paper seemed to be floating if you squinted passed the glass. David picked it up and looked at it for a few seconds. 

“Is that my resume?” 

“This? No. It’s a list of questions corporate has produced for your interview. We don’t deal with resumes or cover letters or other formal and … honestly… outdated procedures for interviewing new hires. Antidrome is a forward-thinking company. It’s quite refreshing. But they assess your qualifications and tailor specific questions for each candidate, personally.”

“Everyone goes through this craziness?” 

“Oh not at all. Everyone’s experience is vastly different. It’s dependent on you. You’re making up all of this. We are in the ingress of your mind. Plenty of other people’s experiences are very, very dull. And usually, they aren’t Antidrome material. At least not in the higher rankings. But I gotta say man, this… this is impressive.” David gestured around the entirety of existence. 

“So are you not real?” 

David smiled proudly at Brian and shook his head as if he was thinking, “I cannot believe how brilliant this guy is.” 

…or he could have been indicating, “no.” 

“Just brilliant. You’re going to do so well here.” he said.

But he didn’t actually answer. 

“Lets get to question 1, shall we? If you were orthogonal to non-dimensional space, what kind of animal would you be?” 

“Uh… dolphin?” Brian second guessed himself, “A space dolphin?” 

Brian triple guessed himself, “I don’t know. I’m not sure why I said it.” 

“Don’t worry Brian, there’s no wrong answers here… except for the wrong ones.” David gave a serious tone as he checked off the question with his glass pen.

“Cool. Yeah. That’s… totally reassuring.” Brian thought. He glanced around the all-glass room like it might shatter from him answering incorrectly.

“So, to be clear… was that one of the wrong ones?”

David looked at Brian, deeply, “Oh you’d know if it was. Oh boy, would you know.” 

“Why? What would happen?” 

David shrugged, “I mean I’d just tell you. No big deal. But again, your answers are not wrong, or right.” 

They sat in silence for a beat. 

“Question two, what does the color of success taste like?” 

Brian sat with the question for a second. 

“Rubber….ey purple?” He paused. “With truffle oil?” 

He paused again.

“Is that… a flavor profile you’re tracking?”

“No idea.” David smirked. He checked. 

“Are you writing down my answers?” 

“No. My job is to check them off as you answer.”

“So what is the point of this?” 

“I don’t know.” David smirked. “This is merely a boilerplate procedure. Third question. How do you feel about ego death?”.” 

“...fine?” 

David checked off the question with his glass pen. 

“Mmm-kay. Third question. Who is your least favorite character in a story which objectively doesn’t exist?” 

“… Greg?” Brian said, unsure. 

“Perfect.” David checked off again. “Now if you could sign this four-dimensional document transcendent of Euclidean space, you can move on to onboarding.” 

“Well Brian, I’m pleased to be the first person to say ‘welcome to the Somnesthia team.”

David stood and offered his hand. 

      “Thank you,” Brian accepted the handshake, “Hey, David, uh… what is this job, exactly?” 

“It will all be explained to you in the onboarding training presentation.”