Nth Floor Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells In being deprived of everlasting bliss? (3.76-80) Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe Edward sat in the lobby. One foot stood firm on the marble floor while the other floated in mid air, the right leg resting on the left knee. Grasped in tight, youthful hands was a broadsheet opened wide, Ed’s eyes darting from story to story, from page to page, back to back. The clock ticked away at the silence, seconds disappearing and then forgotten amidst thefts, wars, arguments and bad weather of the outside world, never to be seen or experienced; just something to think about during one’s lowly existence. The minute hand adjusted, creaking onto the twelve. Eight o’clock. The once empty lobby suddenly swarmed with people through the revolving door. Folding the paper, Ed stood up and took to the front of the marching crowds toward the lift. The door opened and ten, including Ed, walked in to greet the attendant. Twelve. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. Forty-seven. Forty-nine. Sixty-one. Sixty-four. "Top floor," said Ed, the handle on his briefcase held by both of his hands, his left revealing an expensive gold watch. "Are you new here or something? I need a number," replied the attendant. "One hundredth floor, that is the top, isn’t it?" The attendant laughed, his weary, grey moustache humming with amusement. He wore a smart burgundy outfit with thin gold lining, a hat decorated with the same fashion upon his head. "This is your first day isn’t it? I’m Ralph." "Hello Ralph," replied Ed, offering his right hand to shake. Their hands clasped each other’s and rose up and down, their eyes connecting. "I’m Edward Howard, but everybody calls me Ed." "Good morning, Ed. Welcome to Tower. Hundredth floor, was it? Going up." Ralph typed in ‘100' onto the panel and the sensation of rising quickly came upon them once again. "So how high is Tower? What’s the top floor?" "Well, you’re really asking two questions there, because you’ll get two different answers. Tower is as high as you can perceive, as I high as you want it to be. It’s difficult to explain. There is a top floor, but there isn’t, if you get me." "I don’t understand. You mean, there is a top floor, but you don’t know what number it is, is that it?" "Sort of, Ed, but it’s not that I don’t know what number it is, what number I have to press into the little gadget, here, no. It’s that the top floor isn’t a number, it isn’t a definite." "Well that’s just silly, Ralph. We stand in a lift that would get us to the destination, that would get us to the top floor, thus there must be a definite top floor if we can reach it." "Who says we can reach it? Just because theoretically it can be reached in the lift, that the lift must be able to get there, doesn’t mean that we’ll ever be able to see it. It would take a lifetime to reach the top floor. Ten lifetimes maybe. Maybe an infinite number of lifetimes. That is why the top floor is not definite. While there must be a top floor, we can never know if it properly exists or not as we will never be able to experience it. You cannot think of the top floor in terms of logic, since while it can never be reached or seen, you do not know whether it exists or not." "You mean, because logic dictates that there must be a top floor to a tower, those who believe logic is the definite will search for the top floor believing that it exists, and that will be their doom." "Exactly, striving to better oneself by reaching the top floor. Like Icarus with his wings made of wax, followers of logic will fly too close to the sun and their wings shall melt. They call it the pursuit for the nth floor." Ralph pointed at the panel, at the button ‘n’. "Many have tried it, Ed, I’ve seen it. Bent on believing that the top floor exists, they go insane or die, trying to reach the unreachable, the indefinite." "What is on the nth floor?" Ralph laughed, "Tell me when you get there, eh? Hundredth floor. Have a good day, Ed." "You too, Ralph." The doors to the lift opened and Ed gave Ralph a nod of the head as he left, his briefcase clutched by his right hand. Ed heard the lift doors close as he left, as Ralph descended back to the lobby to pick up more office workers, residents and general staff. Ed marched down the long hallway and walked through the fifth door on the right at precisely 08:05 into his new office, consisting of a desk with a computer, pads of paper and an assortment of pens in a small jar. Shelves lined the far wall with space for books and folders of all sizes, ready to be neatly ordered into importance and date. Edward sat down at the desk, keeping his jacket on and placed his briefcase parallel to the side of the desk. Turning the screen of the computer a few centimetre to the right, it was face on, staring straight at him. It loaded up quickly and efficiently, automatically beginning with a tutorial of Tower. "Welcome to Tower," said the female-voiced tutorial, the speakers humming with light background music. "Congratulations on being able to take part in one of the greatest achievements of mankind. Designed and built by the multi millionaire Ralph Hutchings..." "Ralph...," realised Ed, his eyes wide. "...Tower is a landmark achievement suited to hold a global population. On behalf of the staff at Tower, we hope you to have a pleasant time working in one of the thousands of offices." Ed gently laid back in the leather seat, once again watching and hearing the seconds tick away, one by one, as the hands revolved around the face of the clock. *** 08:10. The door opened. "Edward Howard?" asked the bearded man who entered. "Yes?" "I am your supervisor, Frederick Beegan. Call me Fred. Welcome to Tower. Look, I can’t stay long, fancy an early lunch at, say, ten? Get to know each other? Good. See you at ten - stay here in your office so I know where you are, okay? Right, I’ve got to skip off, see you later, pal." Fred left as quick as he had arrived, leaving Ed by himself once again. They hadn’t given him any work so he just sat, watching the clock, once or twice grabbing the paper out of his briefcase to look over the cartoon page or the ‘news in brief’. *** 10:00. The door opened. "Fancy that lunch then, Edward? I know a nice burger place two floors down, does the juiciest meat I’ve ever tasted. Not that I’m one for really sweaty beefburgers but I can’t stand ‘em dry, know what I mean? Sure you do, everyone’s been fed a burger now and again that’s tasted as if it’s been soaking in a bucket of grease, but the one I had wasn’t from this place so we’re lucky. So where d’you come from, Edward? Downtown? Yeah, my mother lives down there. A bit rough, these days though, she keeps complaining like a monkey in a barrel. Any brothers and sisters? I’ve got a brother and a sister, me. Brother’s a bit of a dunce when it comes to nearly everything and my sister’s got a gift to gab that you’ve never heard - it’s terrible. Some people say I suffer from the same thing. Anyone ever said that to you? Of course not, because we know how to silence them, especially these birds. They just love to go and on and on, it’s as if they’re a machine, but if anyone says I’m like that, I’ll give ‘em a slap round the chops, even if it was me’ own sister. A man’s entitled to do as he wishes, even in this day and age, and with the equality thing and all that, that should by all means give us men the right to punch women, right? It makes sense if we can punch men. Ever punched a man, Edward? Ah, here we are, ‘Burger Palace’. What d’you want? A deluxe? Yeah, you’ll like that. Don’t worry, I’ll get these, it’s your first day. You go find us a table, Edward, and I’ll bring ‘em round." Ed wandered around the brightly coloured seats and tables and found one near the middle of the room. He sat down. ‘Burger Palace’ was empty except for Fred and Ed after a young couple wandered away after finishing their own burgers. Fred walked over to the table, carrying the tray of burgers and placed it on the table. "So Fred, what’s your take on the nth floor?" Fred coughed and looked oddly at Ed. "Look, I know you’re new, Edward..." "Call me ‘Ed’." "...Ed. I know you’re new, but we have a rule that we do not discuss the nth floor." "Why’s that?" "Because there’s no point in discussing the nth floor, there’s just no point. It’s unreachable, so you don’t bother thinking about it. Why bother? It’s like discussing the existence of God, you’ll never come to a definite answer because it’s out of the human brainpower to contemplate the existence or the non-existence of God, like the nth floor. So we just don’t think about it. To me, the top floor of Tower is the hundredth floor, and that’s it. There is no hundred and first floor, there’s just one hundred floors, full stop." "But that’s just living in denial." "So what if it’s living in denial? At least I get on with my life. I go to work, I talk to my friends, I pay my taxes. The world goes on. It continually spins and I don’t try to stop it." "But it is human nature to try to better ourselves - to exceed ourselves." "I cannot disagree with you, Ed, but maybe our striving for perfection should be kept to when perfection is available. When we are dead, when we are in Heaven - that is perfection. While we are in an imperfect world, we cannot touch perfection. We must wait. One man’s greed for perfection could lead to the death of many people." "But this world has perfection, Fred. This tower has perfection. The nth floor, Fred, to reach the nth floor is to touch God, to become perfect. If you can reach the nth floor, you will better yourself." "The pursuit for the nth floor, like God, is futile. It’s like the search for the Holy Grail - it would never have been found. You want to search for the nth floor? Then go ahead, and die trying." Fred didn’t say another word, and took a large bite into his deluxe burger, some of the grease bubbling out of the opposite side. Ed stood up and walked out of ‘Burger Palace’ and back into the lift, punching the ‘n’ button. The lift sped upwards. *** 12:00. The door opened. Ed was hungry after spending nearly two hours in the lift and decided to stop on the two thousand and two hundredth floor. "So much for the hundredth floor being the top of the tower," said Ed to himself, smirking. He walked down the corridor, a grey wall either side of him, denoting the wearisome existence. At the end of the hall was a small coffee shop. Ed ordered and sat with his cup of tea and a blueberry muffin. There were no windows to look out of, and no one else was in the cafe. No one to stare at or to talk to. Ed finished his snack, took some sheets from one of the adjacent offices and went back to the lift. A press of the ‘n’ button sent him shooting upwards, wrapping himself in the sheets to keep him warm. Quickly, Ed drifted into sleep. *** 01:00. The door opened. Ed woke up, startled and noticed that he had arrived at the fourteen thousand and four hundredth floor. It was raining. The sprinkler system had been set off in the corridor and the spray was going all over the sheet that Ed was wrapped up in. Standing, all he could really make out was a flashing red light that must have defined a fire. Drenched, Ed stepped into the corridor and looked down to the other end, seeing a man in rage holding two large guns, firing them into one of the offices. Screams echoed down the corridor. The shooter noticed Ed and fired in his direction, bullets hitting him twice in the chest. The shooter disappeared, leaving Ed on the floor, not really knowing what was going on, the water nearly drowning him. Fighting the pain, he crawled back into the lift and punched the ‘n’ button to go up. *** 12:00. The door opened. Ed got out of the lift and noticed that he was in a large circular room with tall white walls. "Welcome to the nth floor," said a man at the opposite side of the room. Ed hadn’t noticed this other presence, and quickly felt to where he had been shot. The wounds had somehow disappeared. "I’m at the nth floor?" "You are." "Well, that wasn’t too bad. Wasn’t so tall after all, twenty four hours travelling in a lift. What’s that? The nth floor is the twenty eight thousand and eight hundredth floor? Ralph, is that you?" "Yes, Ed, had a good day?" "I suppose so, Ralph, got shot a couple of times but I can’t complain. How about you?" "Well, it’s had it’s ups and downs," laughed Ralph. "Tell me, Ralph, why did you build Tower? Why did you build the nth floor?" "The quest for the nth floor is the ultimate temptation, Ed. It is the desire to better oneself to the point beyond humanity. This makes it dangerous to everybody else. Those minds that wish only for themselves will eventually doom everyone else in their pursuit to reach the unreachable goal. I had to filter these people away from society, from life itself. Those are the people that must be gotten out of society, those who wish themselves as Gods over everyone else, to wreak havoc to get it and wreak havoc when they have it. Those are the people who have lost faith in me, have lost faith in the indefinite, in the ultimate, in the omnipotent. They believe logic and when I create a possibility for infinity, defying their logic, they wish that to be their new logic, their greed tempts them so. Those are the people who do not deserve to experience the nth floor for eternity. Instead, they must realise its existence and mourn their folly for all time." "Then, if I am not allowed here, where shall I go?" "You shall forever remain in the definite, knowing that you can never reach the nth floor." *** "Don’t let him shoot the moon! Can anyone stop him? Who’s got the ace of hearts? Yeah! Twenty five points for you!" "Damn it, I was so close! I’ve had enough of Hearts, let’s get back to work." Daniel stood up first and John followed, leaving Mark and Peter at the table to play some Shithead. Spare time consisted of card games and that was it. Sevens, blackjack, poker, pontoon, hearts, shithead, war. Never a bad time to play cards. Daniel pushed the button for the lift and the door opened. "Christ! Not another one. Got shot twice as well, look. Probably that flip-out several thousand floors down this morning. Jesus, I hate it when that happens, so bloody freaky. Right, up to the eight millionth floor, I suppose, got to get that letter to admin. You’d better tell the floor manager to mop this poor sod up."
Copyright © 2004 Jack M Brown |