Chapter Text
Mike peered out the window as he pulled into the parking lot. There was no mistaking he was in the right place. What other company campus featured a giant building shaped like a studded letter G? The weirdness didn’t stop there, either. They owned the whole valley, but hadn’t built up very much of it. Just the area next to the geologically-uncharacteristic towering rockface at the one end. The part that had been developed looked like they’d filled in arbitrarily as they thought of new things to add. Nothing about them indicated they belonged together. On the way in, he’d passed buildings of various shapes and sizes, a fast food restaurant (G Burger? Must be a company internal thing) and even something that looked like a rocket silo. Mike wasn’t sure if that inspired confidence or not.
Of course, he’d heard the rumors about Gizmonic Institute- everyone had. Unusual sounds, weird lights at night, oddly shaped packages delivered at strange hours, that kind of thing. A few years ago they had even made the news, just barely. Something about a janitor stealing a satellite or something? Crazy stuff like that. But this was a research and development company, right, more or less? From what he understood, they gave money, equipment, and lab space to anyone with an idea. What else could you expect? People were always suspicious of anything outside the norm, so they were bound to whisper. Mike hadn’t thought much of it.
Now that he was here, though, he had to admit the place kind of unsettled him. It was huge, but oddly devoid of regular human noise. Eerily quiet, in fact, except for the hum of machinery that didn’t seem to be coming from anywhere in particular. The few people he’d seen as he drove through had watched him with interest as he passed, but, while he couldn’t put his finger on why, they hadn’t seemed entirely friendly. Almost like a cat watching a bird. But he was probably imagining things. He tended to do that.
Then again, everything about this job had been on the sketchy side from the beginning. It came through the temp agency, like always, but they’d gotten it from a bizarre note, handwritten on a piece of Dukes of Hazzard stationery. It listed seemingly random skill requirements like “leaf identification” and “ability to whistle a plus!”, and had ended with “Uyuck-uyee”, which nobody could decipher. Maybe it wasn’t English. It had also included a bizarre phone number, if that’s even what it was- D13TVF5. Mike didn’t know how one would even dial that, but apparently it worked, because the agency had set up the job. Everyone else had refused to take it, citing the stories about Gizmonic and the strangeness of the request. It’s not like you could blame them. Mike probably wouldn’t have taken the job either, if he hadn’t been kind of desperate.
He glanced into his rear-view mirror at the boxes and assorted belongings piled in the back seat. He’d found the eviction notice on his door when he got home from work two days earlier. It hadn’t been totally unexpected, with it being the third time in a row he’d been late on his rent, but still, he’d hoped...anyway, it wasn’t a huge surprise. With them hiking up the price every couple of months, and endless strings of increasingly poor-paying jobs, he just hadn’t been able to keep up. He didn’t actually have to be out until the end of the next day, but he preferred to just get the work over with.Thankfully he didn’t have that much stuff.
Oh well. In light of everything, it probably would have been time to move again soon, anyway. He had no idea where he was going to go, but he’d find something. Might have to sleep in his car for a few days, but he’d manage. He never did seem to be able to stay in one place for very long. Especially the past few years. He didn’t exactly mind the semi-transience, but at the same time, it would be nice to have a little bit of stability for once.
Mike sighed, then realized that he’d been sitting there idling for the past six or seven minutes. He quickly shut the car off and looked at the clock again. 7:34. He didn’t need to be there until 8:00, but he might as well just go in now and be early. No point in sitting out here. Besides, he might have to go back out to one of the other buildings. The address hadn’t specified.
He got out of the car, stowed his keys in his pocket, realized he’d forgotten his paperwork and reached back in to grab it. He started to shut the door, then remembered the bag containing his jumpsuit, and reached back in again. He glanced at the bag with distaste as he slung it over his shoulder. Officially, the agency required him to wear it at work, but no way was he wearing it anywhere else. As Mike finally closed the door, some movement near the base of the building caught his peripheral vision. He looked toward it, but by the time he’d turned his head, it was gone. Weird. He thought he’d seen a pair of eyes peering out from a hole between the wall and the ground, but there was nothing there. Definitely just his imagination.
After several minutes of searching, Mike finally found the entrance to the building. It was all the way on the opposite side of the parking lot, wedged in against another wall at a weird angle. There were no signs, or even real sidewalks, but he had stopped expecting anything here to fit standards of normalcy. Mike pushed open the clouded glass door, and almost stopped in his tracks as he stepped into a bright shaft of sunlight. He looked up, shielding his eyes with the papers in his hand, and saw that the ceiling measured probably 100 feet. The skylight at the top must have been huge, but it looked tiny from the distance.
Realizing he resembled a drowning turkey, Mike pulled his gaze away. He surveyed the rest of the lobby, and found it surprisingly non-descript. Despite the cathedral ceiling, the room itself was relatively small, with walls, floor, and furniture all done in varying shades of medium to light gray. A half dozen orthogonal wooden chairs lined the left wall, next to a coffee table set with a single techy-looking magazine. The only attempt at decoration were two short palm-type plants (probably fake) in each corner. An equally gray reception desk sat in the very center of the room. Even the receptionist, a bespectacled woman probably in her thirties, wore a high-necked, button-down-lab-coat-thing in the same color. A long hallway curved away behind the desk into more dim grayness. With no overhead lighting or windows apart from the giant skylight, Mike couldn’t see down it more than a few feet. Overall, considerably less dramatic than he would have expected after seeing the outside. It just looked like a slightly mod waiting room. He almost felt a little disappointed.
Mike walked up to the desk, trying to keep his from sneakers from squeaking against the sealed concrete floor. The receptionist glanced up at him momentarily, but went back to her computer screen. Mike waited a few moments, but she continued to ignore him.
“Um...excuse me?” he said finally.
The woman looked up with a mildly irritated expression, though she didn’t seem busy with anything in particular.
Mike cleared his throat. “Um, I’m here for a temp job? I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction.”
“Oh.” Her brow unfurrowed slightly. “Okay, I can look that up for you,” she said in a bored tone. “Who are you here for?” She turned to the Rolodex on her desk and flipped open to the first card.
Mike looked down at the paperwork he’d brought with him. “Uh, a Dr. Clayton Forrester?”
The receptionist looked at him vacantly for a moment, then closed the Rolodex and turned back to her computer. “There’s nobody here by that name,” she said.
Mike blinked. He glanced back at her giant Rolodex. There had to be hundreds of names in there. A facility this big had to employ tons of people, even if he hadn’t seen many yet. She couldn’t have them all memorized, could she? And if she did have them memorized, why would she need the giant Rolodex?
“...Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yep,” she replied, eyes still on her screen.
“Well, it says on my papers here-” Mike began.
“No Forresters here,” she said.
Mike looked down at his papers again. “No T-” he squinted at the page to make sure he’d read it correctly. “No TV’s Frank, either?” he asked. TV’s Frank? What kind of name was that?
The receptionist shook her head, clicking her mouse. “Nope.”
“Well, okay then...” Mike said. “Thanks.” He turned to leave. So, what now? Was it worth checking at any of the other buildings?? It didn’t seem likely that he’d fare any better there. How had he gotten the job in the first place if there was no Dr. Forrester here? Was this some kind of prank? Possible, but who would be bored enough to bother playing a prank like this, especially on someone they didn’t know? And it couldn’t be anyone he knew; none of them were creative enough. Maybe it was all some kind of big mistake. Whatever the cause, this really sucked. Even with the money he would have made this week, he still wouldn’t-
“Psst!”
Mike paused. He looked around, but didn’t see anybody else in the room. He looked back behind him at the receptionist, but she seemed fully occupied with her computer.
“Pssst!”
He listened more carefully to hear where it was coming from, but all he got was the occasional tap of the receptionist’s fingernails on her keyboard. Maybe he’d just heard a hissing air duct or something. He started towards the door again.
“Hey!”
Mike finally pinpointed the sound around the right wall and turned towards it. As he did so, a small horizontal window opened up in the baseboard, just above the floor. From inside, a face looked out at him. It caught his eye.
“Hey!”, the face whispered again. “Over here!”
Mike slowly raised an eyebrow. He looked back towards the receptionist again, to see if she noticed the phantom person in the drywall, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention. He turned back to the wall-window. Now a hand had appeared next to the face, gesturing for him to come closer. Mike pointed at himself, and the face nodded vigorously.
Okay. Well. Maybe he really had seen a face on wall outside earlier, then. Or, maybe he’d completely lost his mind. Either one, really.
He walked over to the wall-person, who waved as he got nearer, and bent down slightly to get a better look. The person seemed to be male, although it was hard to tell from just eyes, nose, and a forehead.
“Uh, hello,” Mike said.
“You’re here for the temp job for Dr. Clayton Forrester?” the wall-person asked.
Mike leaned back in surprise. “Uh, yeah, actually I am. Do you know something about that? I thought I...might be in the wrong building or something?”
“Nope, you’re in the right place,” Wall-Person said cheerfully. “Right this way.”
“Um, which way, because-”
In answer to his question, the floor a few feet to his left dropped down to reveal a steep set of stairs, leading under the wall.
“Ah.”
“Down here!” Wall-Person’s voice came from below.
Mike looked down the staircase into the darkness below. Alright, new theory- maybe he’d wandered into kind of surrealist Lewis Carroll dimension by accident. Despite his better judgement pleading from the back of his mind, Mike found himself a little bit fascinated. He knew he should probably just walk away, go back to the temp agency or something. He should go back to his empty apartment, lay down on the floor, take a nap, and pretend he’d never been spoken to by a wall. But instead, he asked himself what he should have known was a stupid question- what did he really have to lose?
Mike looked back over at the receptionist one more time, but she hadn’t even moved. Perhaps this wasn’t the first time this had happened. Or maybe she was completely oblivious and didn’t care. Mike shrugged. Things had already hit critical mass weirdness, so somehow it didn’t bother him.
He ducked under the wall and followed the stairs downward. It had looked gloomy from the top, but electric sconces along the walls actually lit the place fairly well. After a few moments, a landing came into view. Standing on it was the owner of the wall-person’s face; a squat, friendly-looking man sporting a white pompadour hairdo- complete with perfect spit-curl- and the same kind of coat as the receptionist, only in black. He waved again as Mike approached.
“Hi there, glad you made it. I’m TV’s Frank,” he said, sticking out his hand for a shake.
Mike took it, hesitantly. “Mike Nelson,” he said, looking over the corridor. The first, concrete part of the stairs he’d come down attached directly to the rough stone of the hallway. At least it looked like rough stone. The floor bounced just a touch bit too much under Mike’s feet for him to fully trust its appearance. The light from the sconces didn’t penetrate very deep down the cavern, so he couldn’t tell how far it extended downward. He looked back at TV’s Frank, who had already started down the steps.
“Um, this where you guys work?” Mike asked.
“Not quite. We’re a ways farther along. Follow me,” Frank (would he go by just Frank?) answered, gesturing for Mike to come along.
Mike squinted up at the small square of sunlight shining through the opening at the top of the staircase. He watched it shorten into a slit and disappear as the door slid shut over it, and turned back to look down the hallway. Without the light from the lobby augmenting the wall sconces, it seemed much more foreboding. He started to regret making the allusion to Lewis Carroll earlier. Now all he could think of was a rabbit hole.
Well, if everything he’d seen in the past half hour were any indication, he was already down the rabbit hole. Might as well keep going and see where it led. Mike’s better judgement prodded at him again, but he brushed it off. Sounds of off-key singing from Frank drifted up the steps- sounded like something about waffles. Mike grinned a little. Yeah, this sounded like the kind of guy who would have written that note to the temp agency. Now he understood the “TVF” part of the phone number.
Curiouser and curiouser. He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and headed down the staircase.