Code 5100

“Yes I know honey, but they’re not letting anyone out of the building”, a tiny piece of my heart just broke as I said those words to my daughter. “Promise I’ll be home after dinner”.

“You promise”, her sweet voice only wanting not to break another promise.

“I swear. If they don’t come in 30 minutes, I'll dig a hole through the snow to get to you”

“Okay daddy, I love you”

“I love you too sweetheart, can you get mommy on the phone again?”

“Yes, here you go mommy”, said my daughter as she passed the phone to my wife.

“Thank you, sweety”, her voice far from the microphone.

“Hi honey, so is it that bad?”, said my wife, with a clear voice now.

“To be honest I don’t know, I can only see as far as I can through the window in the building, and it seems like the plow trucks are on their way here”

“So you’ll be home after dinner”, said my wife, also breaking my heart to say the truth, I wanted to say I would be there before, so I can at least play with my daughter and maybe watch a movie.

“I think so, and I promise ill start looking for other exits”

“Don’t get lost okay, I don’t know how you manage to navigate through that building of yours is like a freaking maze”

“I know but I’ve been working here for at least 2 years, I know my way around, plus I do get to explore a little bit more, and maybe get someone out of here as well that has a date with the love of their lives”

“Awwww”, said my wife, “we’ll let’s pray that the plow gets there soon we miss you”

“I miss you too”, I said, “I’ll start looking”

“Don’t get lost and if you do call me”

“I will don’t worry plus ill keep texting you”

“Okay”

“I love you”

“We love you too”

She hanged up. It has been a busy week at the office, many people have been fired and all the pending tasks have landed onto me or my colleague who is working on one on his laptop.

The building is 25 stories tall, at least five of the floor are owned by the head of the company, the Є Company (they never make you forget the letter; it’s plastered all over the building), and the other floors are a mini-series of 4 rooms with different businesses. Some of them are cafes, where others are startup companies.

The floor is at has at least 4 departments, each one has a specific room with tons of desks and computers, although some of them aren’t used because we know adopted the Google workspace (bean bags, lounge areas, and nap places), which if I’m being honest isn’t as fantastic as it seems, it gets older the more you see it.

“Yes!”, yelled my colleague Dmitri from his computer, I guess he finally cracked the task he has been working on. “Finally”

“Took you 2 days man congrats”

“Thank Stack Overflow”

A chuckle escaped from my mouth.

“What dude, it was twice as hard as I thought it was going to be”

“They gave three days for that task, this was the second one”

“And now we relax”, he said as he opened his backpack, grabbed his computer, charger, and other trinkets, stuffing them into his pack.

“Are you ready to go?”

“Where are we going?”

“To look for an exit, there are plows everywhere and there has to be an emergency exit”, he said getting up from his chair, making him 6’ 5’’ and me looking like a dwarf at my 6’ 0’’. “What don’t wanna risk it”

“I do, to be honest, then let’s go I know a place that I want to check out”

I followed him to the elevator, the doors opened and we got in. Dmitri pushed a button, but to my surprise, we weren’t going down. I saw the buttons, and the only one lighting up was one of exclusive access to senior management.

“I don’t know if you notice but we’re not going down, and I’m pretty sure that the only exit from the top is one to our deaths, plus how the hell did you manage to get access to the superior levels”

“I copied the RFC iD from one of the guys at the cafeteria earlier”

“I thought we were finding a way out”

“We are, but we are also exploring it’s like Minecraft”

“I’m more of a Legend of Zelda guy”

“Even better”

As we got higher and higher I began to notice the camera, it no longer had a recording light on.

—————————————————————————————————————

When the elevator doors opened, we were surprised to see an open round space in the middle of the floor. It was a wall with curbed edges displaying all kinds of tech, old and new, through glass panels. The weird thing was the only doors on this floor were at the sides of the walls, one for each one.

“Dude look at that”, said Dmitri stuck with awe at one of the tech pieces, he was careful enough not to touch the panels, there might have been alarms around the panels.

“No way what’s this doing here”, said Dmitri looking at a device in the left panel wall. As we got close, my eyes began to widen as we got closer.

“Weren’t there a finite amount of those in the 80’s”

“Yes the last one was seen in here in the city like 40 years ago”

“That’s strange”

“I think it’s connected to something”, I said noticing the cables going through the wall.

“No way”

“Look at the cable behind”

“We have to check that out”, said Dmitri walking towards the door to its side.

“No way, we came here to find an exit”

“There’s a door to this side of the panel”

“Yes I know, and I’m pretty sure that they saw us getting here, so we might as well kiss our jobs goodbye”

“Have you noticed that there aren’t any cameras”

I didn’t. There weren’t any desks nor offices, only empty rooms, and windows looking a the skyline of Manhattan.

“And the camera wasn’t recording”

“Was that you in the elevator”

“That was the access key”, he said going to the back of the wall, looking for the door at its side.

It had a card reader on its side. Without hesitating a single bit, Dmitri passed the card and the light at the top of the sensor turned from red to green. With a loud thud, the lock came off. Dmitri pushed the door open to see even more lights. There were servers mounted, but the sole thing that drew our attention was a single computer with a black background, and a menu displaying in green.

“We now need to get the hell out of here”.

“Aren’t you a bit curious”

“I am, but there’s something weird here, I can’t put into words”

“That's the lunch talking”, he said as he took long steps towards the main console.

It only took a step, for me to begin feeling light-headed. Dmitri saw me dance a little on my way to the computer.

“You okay?”

“Yes man, I think it was the lunch, plus I haven’t had any water, I think I’m dehydrated”

“Come on dude we were this close”

“Let's just get to the lobby bro, I really don’t want to be here”, my breaths began to be shaken and shorter as I spent much more time in the room.

“Okay man let's go”, Dmitri said carrying me from my arm.

We got out of the room, and immediately I felt better, my breaths got normal, but the dizziness was still there.

“We are almost there”, said Dmitri watching his steps, as we got closer to the elevator, “Hey wasn’t the elevator here”

That’s when I looked up, my head still spinning, and saw that the wall we just came through it no longer had the elevator doors. Solid wall.

“They were here a moment ago, it was only 5 minutes”

“Let me call for help”

“Dude our jobs”

“We’ll say the elevator got broken and got us here, that’s the fucking least of our problems”

As I grabbed my phone from my pocket, I speed-dialed my wife, only to hear consecutive dialing notes. I checked my network and there was no signal. My palms began to sweat, my ears began to pop, and my throat began to feel dry as the seconds passed.

“Dude, where are the other rooms?”

I lifted my head and saw just the round opening, there were no longer rooms to look through, no windows, only four walls, and the museum of tech infant of us.

“Dmitri”, I said inhaling hard enough that my lungs got oxygen, “What the hell was in that computer”

“I don’t know man, I just saw weird numbers and a menu with places”

“What’s in the other door”

“Let me check”

As he ran to the other door and passed the card through the sensor, it only returned a beep, that rejected the card. He tried again. And again. And nothing.

“Damn it!”

“Let's get inside the room with the computer”

“Are you kidding that’s what got us here in the first place”

“Go inside, and tell me if the room changed”

He ran to the other door, took a look, and said, “It’s still the same”

“Then that’s the way out, ill keep calling my wife, lets get in”

“You can’t get in, you almost passed out from just stepping inside, what if we punch through the wall”

“We can do that or we can go through the only place where nothing has changed”

“Screw it I’m trying the wall man”, he ran, taking his backpack off and starting to punch his way through the hollow wall.

I need to get out, I thought, my daughter, my wife. I grabbed as much air as I wanted and got to the door while Dmitri kept at it, hitting it now with a pocket knife he kept in his pack.

“I already broke through”, he yelled

I stepped inside the room and the symptoms began. I tried not to run so that I wouldn’t push anything of its place. My vision became fuzzier the more I stepped in. Every step feeling heavier as I got closer to the computer. I could only see blurry words on the screen, I began to reach for the table. I got closer to the keyboard, and then it stopped.

The dizziness was no longer there.

The flickering lights in the servers were no longer blinking rather fading in and out. The room was now empty, the door was closed.

“Dmitri!”, I yelled, but there was no response. “DMITRI!”

I checked my cellphone, still no signal. The picture of my family showing in the background. Tears began to fall from my cheeks. Would I ever see you again?. I wanted to throw everything. I wanted to break every single bit and open as many wholes in the walls. I screamed as hard as I could for help, but there was no one, not even Dmitri.

Then I heard her, maybe I was hallucinating, but I heard her.

Will daddy come home soon?

He always finds a way, even when he is late.

My heart began to race, time felt still and I had to try everything.

I began to read what was on that computer.

It was only a menu, of places, addresses as if choosing somewhere to go. There were numbers random ones, and characters I’ve never seen in any computer below each address. There were menus of selection, one said to add a new address, another one new user. I pressed the tab button until I reached the new address button and pressed it. That’s when I heard a loud noise, the sound of a gunshot. I wanted to scream, I couldn’t let myself freeze again. I needed to charge through.

The screen was now dark and a message appeared in the console INPUT ADDRESS, in big bright green letters. I typed my address not knowing what the hell was I getting into. The computer processed the information. And then a message appeared.

WELCOME AIDEN

How the hell did it know my name.

As if it was answering, a message began to type itself in the console.

YOU ARE THE NEXT IN LINE FOR THE EXPERIMENT, WE KNEW YOU WOULD COME HERE, EITHER BY CHOICE OR OTHERWISE. DMITRI IS DEAD.

  What?!

HE WASNT NECESSARY TO THE EXPERIMENT

“What experiment is this a sick joke?!”, I yelled.

TO CONTINUE, AND TO KEEP LIVING YOU MUST FIND THE CORRECT LINE OF REALITY.

“This must be a fucking nightmare”

CHOOSE WISELY, FOR THE CONSEQUENCES ARE LESS THAN IDEAL, FOR THE PARADOX WOULD BE CATASTROPHIC AND YOU WOULD SHARE THE SAME FATE AS YOUR FRIEND.

“What the hell?!, and how am I supposed to know that, what the hell did you do to Dmitri?!”

YOU HAVE 30 SECONDS.

A timer began, and a list of never-ending numbers and symbols began to appear. None of them similar to the other, all of them began with a greek letter next to a date. I began to read each number on my head as the countdown got to the 20-second mark.

Damn it how am I…

Then it clicked, Epsilon, I began to read through the list as I found the Є portion. The more I read more carefully, the numbers became dates. But which one should I pick, some of them were past, present and future. The countdown was already in the ten’s, I needed to pick one. The door began to open as slowly, revealing only the head of a smoking gun, and a wall plastered with blood and people in white camp suits.

If you are listening, I love you both, and I tried.

I just pressed enter on the last of the 4 options and prayed it was the right answer.

I felt every inch in my body twitching as if I had a spasm that expanded through my whole body and mind, I closed my eyes grunted, and yelled as the pain got intolerable. Everything became cold and dark, I closed my eyes with the words of my daughter in my head. 

He always finds a way…

—————————————————————————————————————

Then I felt it. Drenching my jeans as it melted through. My legs feeling colder, and my arms covered with snowflakes. I opened my eyes, and there it was in the dark. My house, my wife, my daughter, watching a movie near the fireplace. In front of me, as I looked for the door, a man was standing there, with crossed arms holding an envelope in his right hand.

“That was faster than we thought”, said the man with a stern voice, as if every word got scratched the sides of his throat.

They're where no word coming from me, I was freezing, my arms trying to cover my whole body, to warm me.

“I have to say, you’ve impressed the board of directors, Mr.—”, he looked at the envelope, then returned his gaze at me, “Trejo. As we assumed, Dmitri did show you the way, and we thought he was the one to be saved, we thought the wonder and the uncontrolled situation would highly pin him through the only possible way out, but it was you, you became the first in a 500 trial of physical space displacement, humble as it might seem, it’s quite an accomplishment. Never judge a book by its cover right

“Very well I must go, not before I hand you this”

He handed me the envelope, as I tried to pull myself up. I grabbed it trying no to unfold my arms. It only had my name, no address, and code 5100 written in big red letters.

“Welcome to the Elite 5100”, as he said that, he began walking toward a black SUV with no license plate and the driver never bothered to look anywhere but forward. And just as soon as he was about to get in, he said one last thing, “If you feel like wondering again on the 25th floor, beware of who you invite, and stay away from the ∑ variables, highly unstable. Everything else is in the envelope, farewell Mr. Trejo, don’t get lost”

As soon as the car door was shut, the vehicle moved as quickly as it could. I turned around and tried to walk to my house as every inch of my body trembled, my eyes began to tear up as the air blew harsher, then they saw me.

My daughter glanced outside and pointed at me, pulling her blouse to get her attention as I got up. My wife ran to the door grabbing a coat from the hangers, covering me in with her arms. She began to walk with me helping me as I got inside the house, my legs were sore as hell, feeling weaker with every step, and when I saw my daughter running at me, I felt strong enough to carry her in my arms. All of us embracing each other in the harsh winds. And for a moment I didn’t feel the cold.