Things and stuff

Well, another day has passed with nary a "how do you do," but it's okay! I have other things to show you all (if, indeed, there are any of you at all), and this time it's not even poetry!

I know, I'm pretty stunned myself.

It is, however, in second person for a while. Well, kind of. Sort of. Maybe.

Enjoy it, anyway.

Apartment Time

There is a street that nobody talks about much, mostly because many miss its presence. Indeed, it is little more than an alleyway; cobblestones adorn its surface years after all other streets had been paved over. If you were to walk down this street you would discover that there are few doors upon it, and those doors that are upon it are mostly steel affairs, bolts secured with padlocks deny entry to those lacking keys.

There is one door, however, which is not steel. It is a small wooden door, cracked and forgotten. What was once a robin's egg blue finish is now cracked and faded, the dirt from years of neglect changing the color to more of a dull battleship gray. Several bare spots where the paint has flaked off completely (or been collected as souvenirs by visitors to the street) show that the door is in fact made of solid oak, worn nearly smooth now with age. The doorknob itself seems out of place, as it is highly polished despite the dilapidated door upon which it rests.

The door is never locked, though oddly enough it has never been robbed. If you were to place your hand upon the knob, you may notice the warmth radiating from it. Not hot, but hardly as cold as you would expect to find a brass doorknob down a disused street. It feels as if it has been used recently, indeed as if someone has just walked through the door. The knob turns smoothly, without making a sound, and the door swings open easily enough on hinges that are far less rusty than they've a right to be.

Upon stepping through the door you'd find yourself in a narrow hallway. Intricate Art Deco molding runs on the baseboard, though it (like the door) is cracked and the paint upon it is faded. Dust floats in the air, catching the light from naked bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Once, this was one of the most respected buildings in the city (or so they say), now, it is forgotten; a place of ruined grandeur. The hallway is, of course, lined with doors, all of them equally shabby, all of them painted a uniform black. The doorknobs on these doors, unlike that of the front door, are all tarnished. Save one.

You would have to walk an awfully long way down the hallway before you found it, but on the right hand side, there is a doorknob that is polished rather than tarnished. It is easy to spot, a naked bulb does not hang above the door. Instead a small light fixture in the shape of a lantern hangs from the ceiling, almost always swinging gently from some breeze that you can never feel. The swinging motion causes the light to wash over the polished knob, which in turn glints quite perceptibly.

If you were to place a hand on this polished knob, you would immediately notice that (like the front door) it was unlocked, also that it had been oiled recently. As the door swung open, you may expect to find the apartment within inhabited; but it has not been so for many, many years. The apartment is done in the same Art Deco style as the hallway, and like the hallway the moldings have all fallen into disrepair. A scent pervades the apartment, the smell of dust and grime, added to the smell of still air and old age. The apartment is surprisingly air-tight, and the opening of the door causes the fresher air of the hallway to rush in, stirring dust back into the air.

This apartment was once the home of one of the greatest minds in the world, a man by the name of Edward Tolley. Edward specialized in space/time theory and (though it was never publicized) worked closely with Einstein on the implications of his theory of Relativity. Tolley was absolutely fascinated by the idea of time being something that was relative, and so began seeking desperately a way around seconds and minutes.

Tolley was, in fact, the first to posit the idea of the fifth dimension (though again, his involvement has been covered up). It seemed to him that the matter of time travel was a simple enough one—one needed merely to step out of the fourth dimension into the fifth, and pick the point on the fourth dimension to return to. This was met with derision from most in the community, as was his insistence that it could be done—that we could pass out of the fourth dimension into the fifth despite our being only fourth dimensional beings to begin with. What's more, Tolley claimed that one could do it with existing technology.

The government caught wind of this claim and, of course, demanded Tolley's research. Tolley refused, and quickly found himself called before Congress on trumped up charges (easy to obtain in those days of paranoia) of treason. It shocked the world (or it would have, had the cover-up operation not been so thorough) when Tolley, defiant to the end, suddenly vanished from his seat at the hearings. A search was made of his residence, but all of his research was missing. What's worse, those who entered the apartment reported both auditory and visual hallucinations, ranging from seeing the walls of the apartment decay to glimpses of shadowy figures passing through the hallways.

Darker reports came back from the apartment too, of men entering the apartment and vanishing for days, reappearing later with graying hair and hollow looks in their eyes. There has been at least one fatality reported in the past twenty years; the victim was found in the shower, having somehow appeared in the middle of the wall. Even more disturbing, the aforementioned wall returned to an unmarked state shortly after the body was removed.

Over the years, the apartment has attracted several visitors from time to time, but only those who have learned the apartment's tale—and those are few and far between. The street itself has been stricken from the records; the city as well. It is only known that the city is somewhere on the east coast. Those who manage to find the apartment are seldom seen, and tend to take all of their research with them. For those who seek the apartment are those hoping to learn the secrets of time travel from the old genius himself; it is said that he still lives in his apartment despite its being so clearly abandoned.

The apartment itself is said to exist in multiple forms, in multiple dimensions. The proper actions once you have walked through the door will presumably determine whether or not you are successful; odds are, of course, if you found the apartment you know what to do.

A word of caution: Tolley is a brilliant mind, but he can be cranky—especially now. Tread lightly.