Gerald regarded the floating, amorphous, disturbingly-unctuous object that was now rocketing into the cosmos, with admirable calm. Not that his manner of regarding was particularly calm at all, but considering the circumstances he had found himself in, any degree of impassivity was to be considered quite the feat.
Gerald was right now standing – or was he floating? – in a corridor. Simple enough, you’d say, and rightly so. But now it wasn’t a corridor – it was a room; yet he was also outside, standing next to the largest – now smallest – building in the world. His surrounding environment undulated rhythmically, blending into itself, as primary colours radiated from what appeared to be a discernible epicentre – but just as suddenly from everywhere at once – now from Gerald himself, reversing direction periodically.
Considering this, you would probably agree that even the remotest degree of calm one might exhibit upon finding oneself in such surreal surroundings, then suddenly experiencing (a more suitable word than “witnessing”) the apparition of a floating, amorphous, disturbingly-unctuous object within one’s own body (which had in turn just phased itself out of existence, only to reappear to the left of Gerald’s right) is a degree of calm more than should be expected of the average Gerald.
After a prolonged bout of temporary, yet quite understandable, bemusement and general flailing about, not in the least helped by the fact that his torso was upside-down and he was wearing Iceland, Gerald began to collect himself (physically as well as mentally, for his entire being had decided now was the time to scatter everywhere). He found that if he concentrated enough on nothing in particular, his surroundings would start to stabilise, whilst concentrating on his surroundings, would produce an inverse effect.
Upon discovering this, Gerald focused his thoughts on reality television which, as a proven substitute for nothing in particular, propelled him right back to the corridor he’d originally found himself in. Sheets of chrome thundered along the walls, the floor and the ceiling, adhering to their respective section of the corridor, seemingly without any kind of adhesive to hold them in place; some morphed themselves into doorways, which instantaneously were supplied with doors to way; the prevalent primary colours began spinning around and around, receding steadily, as they were sucked back into oblivion, disappearing with a “fwoop” sound, and the gentle undulation of reality in general became rigid, cold, unfeeling.
The universe gave a mild sigh of relief, to signify a return to normality, and a wish to never leave normality again – and all was silent.
Now that he had a chance to survey his starting location – all the while reminiscing about groups of people, specifically selected as to be as different or as purportedly microcosmic to Johnny Populace as possible, being deposited into certain settings and filmed, with low-brow hilarity ensuing – Gerald could see that the corridor stretched on, past his field of view, into infinity. This did not faze him as much as you would expect.
The corridor, viewed as haphazardly and half-heartedly by Gerald as was possible, could be simply and succinctly described in a mere monosyllable: plain. The sheer, ineffable, infinite plainness of this most plain of corridors was brought into alarming relief by Gerald’s mere presence; his body appeared to radiate colour and warmth to this cold, single-textured malefaction of a passage.
Whilst we have focused on the most and least scintillating things in the corridor, we have ignored the comfortable median; the genial, albeit distancing blend of ennui with excitement, offering the discerning observer a moderate, centrist view of the two extremes, and in the process causing all substanceless thoughts of reality television to slowly slip away from the grasp of Gerald’s conscience.
What we haven’t focused on are the doors situated along the corridor. They occupied only one side and sported a dull, greyish hue. This would normally evoke the utmost boredom in any right-thinking imaginer of reality television – named Gerald – if not for the fact that, out of portholes riveted securely into each door, spilled the most enthralling combination of fantastical colours, embodying that mesh of total excitement and utter boredom that was now causing Gerald, who was perfectly capable of ignoring extremes with extreme thinking, to lose control of the state of inertia he had achieved with his surroundings (since reality television is never a moderate type of nothing).
The universe retracted its mild sigh of relief hastily as a globule of the ceiling simply drifted away, exposing a garish skyline, laughing quietly to itself (if you’re wondering whether it was the globule or the skyline laughing, it was both). Gerald substituted reality television with beauty pageants, hoping to keep this new and fascinating world together for just that little bit longer (though he did not know what drove him to hope so) as he headed towards the nearest door. He could see something blurry and indistinct through its porthole and quickened his pace, even as the floor stretched beneath him, increasing the distance between him and his destination.
The closer Gerald got to the porthole, the more distinct everything seen through it became, and the more Gerald focused his thoughts on what he could see, the more his surrounding environment began to revert back to its previous state. Part of the floor exploded upwards, causing Gerald to leap back, only to find himself right next to the door he had been trying to get to. He quickly pressed himself against the porthole, which he noticed had the letter “R” emblazoned at the bottom, suddenly desperate to see what was beyond it.
There was nothing. At least, there appeared to be nothing.
“Very odd,” thought Gerald. Of course, when an absence of extraordinary occurrences is what someone finds to be odd in a world which had just started to rain the hairs of a middle-aged Norfolk taxi driver named Mortimer, that in itself is very odd. As Gerald was now pondering the complete absence of anything interesting, and not actually pondering things that were in themselves absent of pretty much anything, things started deteriorating rapidly. As it were, this was the catalyst needed to reveal what lay beyond the porthole to Gerald; it was a train. A vast train, smoke billowing fantastically around it, dissipating in a non-existent breeze – it was heading straight for Gerald.
Gerald quickly threw himself out of harm’s way – but nothing happened. His momentary lapse in non-concentration caused the previous gentle undulation of his environment to recommence; he heard a low, rumbling noise, and felt a strong jolt as the corridor was lifted from its foundations and flung through the ether at unprecedented speeds, with unprecedented smoothness.
Gerald saw a flicker of light out of the corner of his eye. Another porthole to his left seemed to beckon, silently, to him. Mindful of his progressively unravelling environment, and yet also mindful of this environment’s nature, Gerald took great pains to travel as slowly away from this next door as possible, quickly reaching it. Gerald’s mindfulness was punished by a further destabilisation of his world. The corridor walls started to peel away as he peered through the porthole, noting the “L” underneath.
At first, he wasn’t entirely sure if he wasn’t merely just looking out into the world he’d seen outside the corridor, as though this porthole was merely a window to it. Things seemed normal enough – well – comparatively. Then something flew past.
A nightmarish assortment of eldritch creatures suddenly covered the landscape; scaly wings branched forth from the backs of monstrous, multi-limbed leviathans of old as they tromped the indiscernible ground far below, or drifted in and out of the mists of the sanguine-tinged skyline, barely distinguishable as they wrought the air with powerful, leathery wings.
They all looked as one at Gerald.
Quickly recoiling from this terrible sight, Gerald fell back to find that the floor beneath him had completely disappeared. He had been so absorbed in the horrors that lay beyond the relative safety of the corridor that he had completely forgotten to focus his thoughts on things of a less tangible nature.
Whilst it was certainly true that Gerald should really have been falling to his ignominious death far below, what was also certainly true was that he currently wasn’t. He took this as a good sign, and felt the “ground”, as it were, beneath him. Sure enough, if he had suffered some sort of dearth of ocular ability he wouldn’t have been able to tell at all that he wasn’t just in a corridor, instead of what was practically a stream of doors careening through the murky void with a Gerald, travelling parallel to these doors, kneeling somewhere in the middle.
There was one last discernible door in the invisible wall of the airborne corridor that Gerald felt compelled to investigate. There was something about the porthole’s light that felt… unique, special.
His.
The world now being far too unstable to take any pretence of obfuscating travel, Gerald found it was only a matter of adjusting to the idea that he really was walking on solid matter, albeit solid matter with identity issues. He reached the door after a brief, wobbly stroll, noticing that, this time, there was no letter emblazoned beneath the porthole, merely a blank, almost expectant plaque.
He peered through the porthole, waiting for the miasma of colours and various indistinct objects beyond it to clear.
He saw himself, mirrored in the porthole. This puzzled him until his unexpected doppelganger pointed downwards, and a handle materialised on the door.
Gripping the handle tremulously, Gerald steeled himself for whatever lay beyond. Feeling sufficiently prepared, he turned the handle, and watched as the door swung slowly open to reveal what lay within. Gerald gasped in wonder and amazement as his senses adjusted to what he could see. He reached a hand out, ready to plunge straight into the unknown when –
– he woke with a start.
Well, that had been weird.
Gerald surveyed the rather depressing walls of his equally austere flat. He was drenched in sweat.
“What a vivid dream,” he wondered aloud, as much to get a bearing on his surroundings as with his voice.
Yes, this was real.
He looked over the side of his bed, and retrieved the pillow that had been flung to the ground during his fitful sleep. He placed it back in its rightful place, slowly pondering what had happened. Suddenly, his face lit up as he recalled the salient details of his unwitting excursion past the veil of consciousness.
He quickly left his bed, and picked his way around the various detritus littered across the room’s floor. He walked past the entranceway to his unused kitchen and unlocked a small door, which was at a right-angle to the door leading out of the flat onto what was possibly the least sterilised landing in the continent. Stepping in briefly, he quickly retrieved something rather large and bulky, placed it gingerly on the floor behind him, and closed the door, locking it resolutely with the flourish of flourishes.
He walked back to his bed, carrying the object slowly lest he drop it, and placed it on a large, dusty-looking desk, replete with the long-discarded tools that had been so comforting to Gerald, and yet had simultaneously cast such a shadow over his recent life.
The object was a typewriter, and by the look of things, it hadn’t been used for a long time.
There was a large stack of paper underneath the desk, from which Gerald withdrew a single sheet. He placed this sheet – first making sure time hadn’t been a detriment to it – in the carriage, after performing a few maintenance checks and replacing the ribbon.
Gerald settled down on a small, slightly uncomfortable stool that had stood loyally at the desk for many a month, waiting patiently for him. He made sure the typewriter was properly aligned and placed his fingers on the keys leisurely, ready to type.
He knew what to do.
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