Jason Luthor - Floor 21

This last one, though… it’s weird.

It’s got two guys. One of them’s almost naked. Glad he’s got his legs crossed. Anyway, he’s reaching out to this other, older guy. Their fingers are almost touching, just not quite. The old guy’s got all these… I guess they’re babies?… babies around him.

Actually, the old dude, if you look at him from a certain angle, kinda looks like he’s sitting in a human brain.

My mind must be playing tricks on me.

Anyway, what gets me is that nobody in this tower even knows what these are about anymore. They were important enough to paint but apparently not important enough to remember. Still, I guess that doesn’t matter at this point. I’m at the doorway. I take a look back down the hall, and Dad and the rest of the group are like specks in the distance. Dang. I didn’t realize it was this long a journey.

Too busy appreciating “art,” I guess.

So, I suck in a deep breath, grab the handles, and push the doors in.

For a moment, I’m blinded by light.

And then I hear the doors close behind me.

“Your name is Jackie,” he says. “My name is Edward.”

He laughs, then throws his hands in the air. “You can call me whatever you like, actually. It’s been so long since anyone remembered what my real name is. They haven’t used it since I was eighteen.”

I look around, and I’m just like… whoa.

His office is huge, and it just stretches on, lined with towers of bookshelves on both sides. Not like those crappy pieces of garbage we have that are falling apart.

These books are new. Brand-new.

He sees my mouth hanging and laughs again. “Jackie,” he says, “come here. Come on.”

I nod, but I don’t walk fast. Actually I can’t walk fast since my legs are ignoring me. The view behind him… it stretches from floor to ceiling and… and it’s so blue. The sun is spying over the clouds, and there’s a chain of mountains that are blanketed by snow. I know they’re not real, but, dang, I wish they were. It takes me a sec before I catch him waving me on to the desk, but I feel like I’m plowing through water. It’s so beautiful I almost want to cry. Then I remember the last time I had this feeling, the first time I came to Floor 1, and I suck it in. I’m not going to get lied to again. So, I take a seat in front of his desk.

The floor is white. The long rug leading to his desk is white. The shelves are white. The desk is white. His suit is white.

I look up at him. “Did I die and not realize it or something? Is this some crazy afterlife?”

The guy smiles. He’s handsome, for an old dude. Sharp face, this trimmed gray goatee. Can’t hate on those silver eyes, either. Eyes I quickly recognize from the commercials repeating on Floor 1. Anyway, he says, “No, you’re not dead. You’re quite alive, actually, despite all odds. I’m quite impressed.”

“You saw it?”

“Yes, Abbott broadcast it all. Quite a heroic attempt to destroy that creature on Floor 16, I must say. I didn’t realize that level of courage was still to be found on the upper levels.”

I’m listening to him, but my chest is just hurting. I feel like a ball is trying to jam its way up my throat. “What’s going on?” I can hear my voice crack when I start talking. Dammit. “Please, I have to know.”

“Where would you like me to start?”

I glance around, looking from the bookshelves to the window and back to him. “What is this place? Who are you? Why did you bring me here?”

He holds up a hand as his lips twist upward. “One at a time, please. We can tackle the obvious. This is Authority Central, the office of the tower director. I am he and he is I. Director Edward Pygmalion, at your service. And the tower you have lived in your entire life is properly termed Tower Pisa. But I get the feeling you’re more interested in why you’re here.”

“Well, considering it was just yesterday that I was getting sentenced… to Reinforcement…”

“Ah, yes, an unpleasant process, that. I have to see it here, you know, along with most of what happens in Pisa.”

“You have a television, too?”

He chuckles. “A television?” The director lifts his head upward like he’s going to talk into the wind. “Screens on.”

Suddenly the bookshelves that were there a minute ago are gone. I mean, I’m not absolutely sure they were ever there in the first place. It’s hard to say. What I know is that dozens of screens surge to life and hide the walls where the bookshelves used to be. One, then another, light up until they stretch all the way back to the doorway. Even the window behind the director suddenly lights up, showing a view of the gardens on the rooftop. The black clouds replace the white and the gray skies remove the blue, and again I’m staring at the crapsack junk heap of a world I live in.

He looks at me. “I see everything, Jackie. At least, as much as a single human being can see. It is my job, and I am the only person in the Tower that is given this responsibility. Only a person assigned to the position of director is given access to this much knowledge, much like your father is the only person allowed so much knowledge of the Creep. Every man and woman to their task, and none other. The left hand cannot know what the right hand is doing.”

“Why?”

“Because too much knowledge makes the people discontent,” he continues. “You already see it on Floor 1. Who seems happier to you, Jackie? The people on Floor 1, that live their daily lives consuming Voluptas, or the people on Floors 10 or 11 that can honestly celebrate the Scavenging?”

My teeth almost drain the blood from my lower lip as I try to figure this out. “The more you know, the less happy you are?”

“Jackie, I am the least happy of all the people in Tower Pisa, because I alone carry the burden of knowing there is no leaving this place. All we can do is keep the Creep at bay. Now, imagine if everyone that lives here knew the truth? That the stories they clung to were false? What then?”

“They’d… they’d…” I know what he’s saying. I don’t completely believe The Book of the Tower myself, and that’s already depressing. “They’d get desperate.”

“Exactly. As of now the lower levels believe that Floor 1 is securing the future for them. The Scavenging gives them hope and brings new and exciting times to their lives. They believe that the technology we acquire will help battle the Creep. It might not be enough to make them happy, but it’s enough to keep them content. Meanwhile, those on Floor 1 know that everything we do is futile. You’ve already seen it, their condition. Why they need the Voluptas.” He chuckles as he folds his hands on the desk. “Now imagine with me. What if the people of Floor 1 stopped taking Voluptas?”

“They’d get… sad. Depressed.”

“What if they stopped doing their jobs?”

“Then the Tower would stop functioning.”

“And what would the people of the lower levels do?”

I look down, shrugging. “I dunno. Get angry. Curious. And like I said, desperate.”

“What you mean is more desperate than they already are. And what happens when 15,000 people, all at once, suddenly get depressed and desperate? How do you think the Creep would react?”

My eyes shoot up to his. “Oh my God.”

He leans back in his chair, his folded hands resting on his chest. “Which is why I alone am given the duty of watching the Tower and soaking in all I can about its daily functions. So it was decreed, long ago, by the Builders.”

“Who were they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why are we here? Why did they build this tower?”

“Again, sadly, I don’t know.”