A maze of corridors, sterile and white and just as Jack had laid them, led him to the cafeteria he knew he’d find. Dr. Charles Lyman was the CEO of NEAPS Inc., the New England Anthro-Psych Sciences corporation, which was founded to dig deep into how cultural developments were shifting and shaping human psyches. Whether it was the latest boy band, reality TV show, department store sale, or city layout decision, they conducted exploratory analysis of the most intimate of details of human behavior and beliefs, to determine how seemingly unrelated cultural factors were creating a new psychological quotient. Engraved into the marble walls of the cafeteria, Jack read it silently and then summed it out loud in his own vernacular:

“Just trying to figure out how things change the way people think. Wow, I still can’t believe I’m here…everything’s just exactly how I created it…”

The whole room was deserted, and there was no food in sight. ‘Must be a Saturday…,’ he thought. Searching his pocket, an inexplicable 75¢ in the contemporary coinage was available to him, and he located an ‘old-school’ vending machine in the adjoining hallway. ‘I didn’t write about this detail, though…’, but he couldn’t care less as he rejoiced at the 60¢ price of a bag of pretzels.

Depositing his change, he made his selection and anxiously watched the retaining helix twist ’round. Landing with an all-familiar thud, he reached in to grab them and froze in horror as the machine and its floor nearby it spun 180 degrees. Withdrawing the salty treats, it was abundantly clear that he’d unknowingly engaged with an entrance to a secret passageway.

“I KNOW I didn’t write about this…” Jack whispered aloud. He pulled out his pen knife.

This hallway was similar to the ones he’d already seen except for a lack of overhead lighting. Instead, blue LEDs ran 4 inches below the ceiling on each wall, creating just enough illumination to see the ceiling, but not the floor. Jack gingerly stepped forward. The air was stale and static; a major contrast from prior.

By about 15 yards in, Jack’s eyes had adjusted and revealed that his right-hand wall was reflective enough to be used as a mirror. He made sure he was still himself. Everything was quite the same: five feet and nine inches tall, dark green button-down shirt and jeans, short blonde hair and slightly unshaven. Aside from the change in his pocket, he was still fully himself, although perhaps a bit older? In this light it was so hard to tell…yet easier all of the sudden? The intensity of the blue lights grew quickly, and soon Jack had to shield his eyes from the blinding blue above him.

Looking down the hall, he saw a door, and immediately sprinted full-force toward it. Just as he arrived and twisted the knob, it occurred to him that he’d left his sunglasses in Dr. Lyman’s office. He opened the door slowly to a pitch black room. With only the outline of the doorway lit in blue on the floor, he took a step in. Although the door he’d opened was wooden with a brass knob and  pushed inward, a steel automatic door slammed quickly downward from the same doorway and trapped Jack inside, plunging him into darkness.

It was freezing, and Jack was overcome with cold and fear. He dropped his pen knife and shrunk down to a crouch holding his knees to his chest and shivering, hoping somehow a light would appear soon. Just as tears began to well in his eyes, out of the darkness, a bellowing voice with Scottish brogue addressed him loudly (adding yet another factor of noise to Jack’s sensory assault):

“JACK, M’ LAD! GOOD TO SEE YE!”

And that’s when everything went white.