How To Fix An Elevator: Chapter 2
"We will phase test you now."
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The facility was larger than it had initially appeared, with several corridors branching off in different directions. Taylor chose one at random and began exploring, taking in more details of the strange environment he’d found himself in.
The white-clad staff moved through the corridors with the same unsettlingly mechanical manner he’d observed in the main room by the elevator. They carried various pieces of equipment—tablets, scanning devices, and other pieces of portable technology that looked just as drab and formless as their handlers. Occasionally, two of them would stop to consult each other about something, but their conversations were conducted in the same measured, emotionless tones he’d encountered previously.
Taylor passed several workstations where staff members were engaged in activities that seemed important at a distance but made no obvious sense. One person was carefully arranging small white objects in precise geometric patterns on a white table. Another was taking readings from a device that displayed numbers that fluctuated constantly but never seemed to settle on any particular value. A third was filling out forms by copying information from one identical form to another, as if the act of transcription was itself the purpose of the work.
But rather than dare to fruitlessly engage in another nonsensical conversation that would do nothing more than test his rapidly waning patience, he began to navigate his surroundings with a more targeted purpose:
Getting the fuck out of there. Preferably by some method other than a magic elevator.
Perhaps there was a flying carpet lying around somewhere.
He sauntered around corridors, cubicles, and other little nooks of uniformly vacant-minded drones who continued to pay him no mind, staying close to the walls and looking for any sign of what might lie beyond them, all while keeping track of his movements so as to mentally map out where he had and hadn’t been—an increasingly arduous task given the near-uniformity of everything.
The sterile white aesthetic continued throughout the facility, but Taylor eventually began to notice subtle variations. Some sections had floors with a slight textured pattern, others had different types of lighting—still the same shadowless illumination, but varying in intensity and color temperature. It was as if the entire place had been designed by someone obsessed with creating the perfect laboratory environment, but who kept making minor adjustments to get it exactly right.
No windows.
Not even another elevator or staircase.
Finally, though, a quick double-take yielded sight of a small, simple door that had all but eluded his attention.
“Thank Christ.”
But as he closed to within about 5 feet of his much-sought-after escape route, he felt a rough hand with a startlingly strong grip clamp down on his right shoulder.
Taylor spun around to see a hulking, broad-shouldered figure, well in excess of 6 feet tall, dwarfing his own 5’7, doughy desk-bound frame.
Same white clothing. Just bigger.
Same blank stare, frozen on a thick, square head with a broad nose and rich topography of beefy forehead folds and ridges that resembled those of Neanderthals and bulldogs.
“Emergency exit for emergency only,” the muscle-bound man stated in a deep, low, monotone growl.
“Yes, well, you see, sir, I’ve been granted emergency level clearance by…uh…”—Taylor scanned the room for the most important-looking worker he could find— “That guy!” he said, pointing, then quickly lowering his finger with immediate regret as he noticed what his chosen paragon of authority was up to.
He appeared to be performing some series of tests on the tablet he was holding—the tablet which gave him a similar air of professionalism (if one could call it that) to the woman who had so patiently tried to enlighten him on the principles of basic elevator mechanics.
When Taylor first looked over, the man appeared to be scribbling down notes on the tablet with some kind of stylus. Now he noticed that the “stylus” was just an ordinary pencil. And interspersing the periods of scratching up a likely blank, black digital screen with graphite was a series of increasingly bizarre activities:
Leaning one ear close to the tablet, as if listening for something, then taking “notes” on the same tablet.
Scratching, then…petting?...the tablet; more notes.
“Oh dear, is he licking it now?”
Paralyzed in dumbfounded horror at the sight of his fabricated human hall pass now licking the pencil itself, placing it in his mouth, and taking phantom notes on the tablet with an empty hand, Taylor initially failed to notice he had been practically lifted off his feet by the white-clad brute beside him.
“Wait! What would constitute an emergency?” He asked in desperation, attempting to speak the same language of bluntness these people seemed so accustomed to.
“Classified.”
“What is?”
“Emergency.”
“You can’t tell me what constitutes an emergency?”
“Classified,” he repeated, still shambling away from the door with Taylor very comfortably under his control.
“Okay, well, there is an emergency, but I can’t tell you what it is because it’s classified.”
His captor stopped in his tracks for a moment, as if considering the claim and how it might alter his correspondingly prescribed protocol.
“Phase test.”
“What?” Taylor asked, as he was finally released.
“Not phase tested,” the bulky man elaborated, sniffing Taylor, as if gathering evidence to confirm his claim.
What the shit was that about—maybe he is part bulldog?
“Not phase tested,” the lumbering hulk repeated. “Phase test, then emergency exit.”
“Ah, I see, so I need to be ‘phase tested,’” Taylor said, emphasizing the strange phrase with air quotes, “and then I can walk out that door?”
The imposing man’s silent nod was the first sign of encouraging news he’d had since the elevator doors opened.
“Fine. What’s phase testing?”
“Classified.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake—” Taylor exclaimed in exasperation, hand meeting his overtaxed forehead. “Alright, guess I don’t have a choice. How do I get phase tested—and don’t you dare tell me that’s classified.”
“Visitor area.”
“Visitor…what visitor…oh…oh no. I have to go back to vertical elevator lady? Great. This’ll be a blast. Maybe she can explain to me how doorknobs rotate in a circle rather than a triangle, or how you walk through doors on your feet instead of on your hands.”
“Walk that way on feet,” the door bouncer answered, trying to be helpful. “I help with doorknob later.”
“That would be immensely helpful, sir, thank you for your unsurpassed wisdom and kindness,” Taylor replied with sarcasm that would assuredly fall once more on deaf ears.
When he finally managed to find his way back to the woman with the tablet, the very sight of her nearly snapped the critically fraying rope of patience to which he was so gingerly clinging.
“What flo—”
“Nope, we’re not doing this again,” Taylor swiftly cut her off. “I’m here to be phase tested. Phase test me and send me on my way. Please.”
“You haven’t been phase tested,” she stated, rather than asked.
“No shit. Wanna sniff me just to make sure?”
The woman took a step closer, as if about to take him up on the offer.
“No, I was—right, over your head,” he audibly murmured. “No—” Taylor sighed as the woman began turning her gaze upward. “I didn’t…”
But as he reflexively followed her gaze, he noticed something he hadn’t before: a sign high up on a nearby wall that read,
“SUBTERRANEAN ANNEX, followed by a smaller text:
“STAN”
“Son of a bitch,” Taylor muttered, staring at the sign. STAN. Not a person named Stan, but a facility. This facility. Somehow, incomprehensible as it seemed, he was in the right place. But why? Why would someone have brought him to this godforsaken hellhole of a soulless, dystopian workplace staffed by a few dozen seemingly lobotomized saps doing meaningless busy work, powered by the collective strength of about 10 brain cells? Was it some elaborate kind of prank?
“Who called me here—no, let me guess—”
“Classified,” the two said in unison.
“What an alluring mystery.” Alright, who cares, I’ll deal with it when I get back to my office. “I don’t suppose you can tell me anything more about phase testing before—”
“We will phase test you now,” she cut in simply, gesturing toward a transparent chamber in a nearby corner, just large enough for a single person.
Taylor walked over to and casually helped himself into the chamber, confident that—much like every other piece of flashy-looking technology in the facility—no one had ever bothered to flip the “On” switch, much less have the presence of mind to entertain the blatantly obvious necessity of such an action.
Much to his surprise, though, the machinery connected to the chamber seemed to obey whatever commands the woman punched into her tablet, making a quiet whirring sound as it came to life.
Some kind of scanning device extended forth from the adjacent mechanical apparatus, tracing up and down the length of his body a couple of times with a thin band of green light, then beeping a few times at the end of the brief ordeal, as if to announce its satisfaction with the procedure.
“So…is that it?” Taylor asked. “Am I good to go now?”
“Phase test complete.”
“Yeah? Do I need, like, some kind of badge or certificate I can show to—oh right, he’s just going to sniff it out on me,” Taylor recalled. “Alright…I’ll be on my way then…” Taylor continued, just as puzzled as he was relieved that this ‘phase testing’ business proved to be so contrastingly quick and simple compared to everything else he’d been put through so far.
Taylor returned to the door troll, confidently stretching out his arms to the side and presenting his open body for the sniff test he hoped would ensure his safe passage out of the facility.
“No badge.”
“Are you motherfucking kidding me?”
And without waiting to hear whatever densely literalist reply would be loosed from the lips of the brawny bouncer blocking his way, he began angrily stomping his way back to the phase testing area.
“You forgot your—”
“Give me that shit,” Taylor snapped, ripping the small, nondescript badge out of her hand and threading the pin on its backside through his shirt, storming off without another word.
With the route now painfully seared into his memory, he practically sprinted his way through the corridors and around all the twists and turns that led him back to the plain-looking white door.
*Sniff sniff*
“Okay.”
“Okay? You’re good? We’re all good? Everyone’s satis-fucking-fied with my cooperation?” he choked out through gritted teeth. “You’ll let me through now?”
A silent nod.
“You know, not for nothing,” Taylor went on as he approached the door, “Usually, emergency exit procedures don’t take 45 goddamn minutes to resolve themselves.”
“Hand goes on knob—”
“Yeah, I know how to operate a door,” he interrupted, with an emphatically dismissive wave of his hand.
But as the physical door was opened, a proverbial door slammed shut with a deafening, stomach-sinking boom.
“Is this a joke?” Taylor asked in a low voice without turning around.
“Joke?” the guard innocently asked, while Taylor continued to stare forward in utter disbelief.
He reached out to confirm the visual information assailing his wearied eyes by touch, and found the wall of densely packed dirt to be every bit as impenetrable as he initially suspected.
“Knock knock,” his ears faintly registered, but Taylor was far too preoccupied to humor the brute’s attempt at a joke.
‘Subterranean annex.’ I’m still underground? So, there is no other way out. No doors, no windows, just the elevator that brought me here.
“Now you say, ‘who’s there?’ Like this: ‘Knock knock. Who’s there?’”
He shuddered at the thought of getting back in there, but felt comforted to at least now have confirmation that there was nothing supernatural about what had happened—the elevator had simply moved across town through some secret subterranean tunnel. Why such a tunnel had been constructed, why his office building had been thereby connected to this strange facility, and why he had been summoned here in the first place were mysteries that would have to remain unsolved for the moment, but at least he had found a logical reason to believe he could return to where he came from in a comprehensible fashion.
Don’t engage, Taylor thought, speedwalking his way past the familiar corridors, past all the tablet-toting, beep-booping, button-pressing half-wits, and finally past the closest thing he’d had to a halfway intelligent interlocuter in this infuriating underground maze of lobotomized lackeys.
Don’t make eye contact.
Much to his pleasant surprise, nobody stopped him as he approached the elevator doors. There was a single button on the wall. He pressed it, practically wincing in anticipation of what might go wrong this time, but the doors opened without incident, revealing the same ordinary-looking elevator cab that brought him here. The sight alone was like a breath of fresh air—a homey-looking space of comforting gunmetal gray that gave his weary eyes a rest from the achromatic desert of blinding white on which he had been marooned.
He shot a quick, furtive glance over his shoulder as the doors began to gently close, noticing the tablet woman staring back at him with a calm, half-curious expression.
He took a second or so to shut his eyes and enjoy the sense of peace and familiarity before turning his attention to the panel of buttons.
Nine buttons total. Floors 1-8, and a “B” for basement. Same as the building he had come from. Instinctively, he reached out and pressed “1,” but remembered as the elevator responded with silence that he was on the first floor.
Right. Basement, then?
Might as well try the same button that sent him here.
He pressed the “B” button, and then with panicked haste tried to find something to cling onto, remembering how violently he’d been tossed against the elevator’s doors last time. With no handrails and nothing else to latch onto, he dropped low to the floor and covered his head, as if bracing for some kind of explosion.
But nothing happened.
Taylor turned his head slightly and cracked one eye open, peering around, waiting. Then, a couple of seconds later:
“Please present building code.”
Building code? Taylor racked his brain for any hints as to what that might mean—anything he might’ve encountered in this facility, any series of digits that might bear some significance for his own building.
Taking a shot in the dark, he punched in the 4-digit street number of his building’s address.
Nothing.
“Please present building code,” the recorded voice repeated.
Taylor, still on the ground but now sitting up, hugged his knees and thought for a moment.
Jeez, I really don’t want to have to do this…
He took a deep breath, stood up, and pressed the “door open” button.
Shoulders slumped, head slightly bowed in resignation, he decided to begrudgingly face his tone-deaf tormentor once more.
Eyes still fixed on him, she hadn’t moved a muscle, as if she knew all along his latest attempt to escape would be futile.
No hint of a smile or any other expression on her face, no trace of smugness. Just patient expectation.
“Would you like to use the elevator?”
“Yes,” Taylor answered, determined this time to keep his responses simple and to the point, fighting hard against his irrepressible urge to tack on ancillary witticisms to just about every sentence he spoke.
“There is a button on the wall that—”
“That opens the elevator doors, yes, I managed that part just fine.”
“There are also buttons inside that have numbers on them—”
“Basement.” It was getting increasingly difficult to remember he was talking to, presumably, a human being, and not an automated telephone voice menu system.
“You wish to proceed to a different building.”
“Ye—yes,” Taylor stuttered, blinking in bewilderment. “So you do know that this building is somehow connected to my—to a different building.”
“Oh yes, the Subterranean Annex connects to many different buildings.”
“So then…what was all that horseshit about elevators only moving up and down?” he quickly waved his hand up and down, scarcely an inch in front of her face, his already short fuse shortening by the second.
“Elevators only move up and down,” she nodded in confirmation.
“Well, then, Einstein, explain to me how you get from this building,” he gestured emphatically toward the ground with both hands, “to another building,” he finished, snapping his gesturing hands to the side.
“Albert Einstein was—”
“Nope, stay with me,” Taylor pleaded, clapping his hands together. “Different *clap* building *clap* Proceed to different building. How?”
“Transfer *clap* pod” she responded, then pointed to a spot directly behind Taylor.
He followed her pointer finger and turned back toward her with a quizzical look on his face.
“That would be the elevator.”
She shook her head. “Elevators only move up and down,” she repeated the common refrain, “transfer pods move sideways. Like this.”
He practically swatted her hand away as she attempted to demonstrate once more the difference between vertical and horizontal movement.
“Okay, I get it now. You’re just busting my balls with semantics. When it goes up and down, it’s an elevator. When it goes side to side, it’s a ‘transfer pod.’ Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you call it. Tell me how to use it to get from this building back to my own building.” He paused for a moment, noticing how quickly he’d slipped away from his attempt at sticking to simple statements.
“To operate the transfer pod, no ball-busting is required,” she answered in the same neutral tone.
“Great. I need my building’s code.”
“Yes, a building code is required to use the transfer pod.”
“And I do not know my building code.”
“Then you cannot use the transfer pod. Would you like to go to a different floor?”
“Slow down. If my building has a code, someone must know it, right? Who can I ask?”
“Thaaat iiis claaassiiifiiied,” she answered in an exaggeratedly slowed down voice.
*sigh* alright, that one’s on me.
“I appreciate that the code might be classified. What I’m asking is who can declassify it for me—you can talk at a normal speed,” he added quickly.
“That’s classified.”
“Who I can ask for help is classified?”
She nodded.
Taylor let out another sigh, shaking his head. “You poor souls, you really don’t know shit down here, do you?”
“That is correct. We do not know about shit. Likely, shit, too, is the subject of classified information.”
Taylor, completely sapped of his capacity for the amusement that such a reply otherwise deserved, paused in thought for a moment.
“What’s on the second floor?”
“Would you like to know?”
“Yeees,” he retorted in a slow, patronizing tone. “That’s why I asked the question.”
“To proceed to the second floor, you would press the button labeled—”
“Right, we’ve been over this. I know how elevator buttons work. Can you tell me anything now about what’s on the second floor before I physically operate the elevator to take myself there?”
She shook her head.
“Lovely. And what about floors 3 through 8? Anything you can tell me about those?”
“All classified information.”
“Excellent. You’ve been an absolute wealth of useful information, and I will regrettably be taking my leave now,” he shot back in mock politeness, turning back toward the elevator.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered under his breath.
Taylor expertly pressed the button on the wall, once again opening the elevator doors, stepped inside, and without hesitation, found and pressed the button labeled “2.”
A small mechanical device he hadn’t noticed before in the top right corner of the elevator cab came to life and projected a red light onto his chest, right where his stupid “look at me, I’ve been phase tested” badge still rested. The light hovered over the badge for a couple of seconds before disappearing, the device receding back into the corner with a jarring noise that one would expect to hear when offering an incorrect answer on a game show.
“Please exit elevator and proceed to phase testing chamber on floor 1.”
“You’re…really? I’ve just been phase tested,” he futilely pleaded with the machine, gripping and pulling on his badge for emphasis. “Unbe-fucking-lievable.”
Stepping out of the elevator, without breaking stride, he trudged right back over to his familiar host and spun her around.
“What gives, lady? You said I could go to the second floor?”
“Have you been phase tested?”
“You fucking phase tested me! Like 10 minutes ago!”
She pointed her tablet at his chest, scanning his badge.
“You have been phase tested for the first floor. To proceed to the second floor, you must be phase tested for the second floor.”
Taylor gently closed his eyes, pressing his fingers against his forehead in consternation, and shrugged.
“Alright, back in the one working machine on this entire floor, I suppose,” he said, throwing his arms up in the air. “But if I get diagnosed with cancer sometime in the next 10 years or so, you’ll be hearing from my lawyer about all this body scanning.”
“I will be listening for your lawyer,” she assured him.
“You may now proceed to floor 2,” she added after the phase testing was complete.
And with those words, Taylor was finally liberated from what was surely the most personally nightmarish place he had visited in his waking life.
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