Chapter 5

The R & R time was taking a bit longer than Mark had first estimated, but he was sure he was making the right decision. It was now 10:15 AM, and his sister and two classmates were happily finishing their showers together in the large bathroom. Emily stood by the open door in the connecting pantry, acting as the link that kept the group connected. Jada and Fatima stood a few feet away. Jada had Madison’s phone plugged into a nearby outlet, and she was idly typing 911 every twenty seconds or so. So far there was still no luck with making contact with the outside.

As they waited, Mark wandered the length of the pantry. There were a few chairs and a small eating table at the eastern end, and he gazed at the pine and spruce park through the window. After a moment Fatima walked over and joined him. She seemed a little shy at first, but then they made eye contact and held it for a long moment. Fatima grinned and said, “Interesting choice you made, giving the group this much time to relax.”

Mark looked at her. She had on her headscarf again, but he remembered her from early this morning. Such pretty chestnut hair ... Mark cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah. I thought my sister and her friends...” He looked at Fatima’s thoughtful nod and realized he didn’t have to finish his sentence.

Fatima gave him a kind smile. “Oh, I’m not complaining. I have to hand it to you, Mark. When you first suggested it, I wouldn’t have dreamed people would want to shower in such a strange place. But now I can’t wait for my own shower. A common theme in both our religions I think, using water to wash away our sins.”

Mark nodded, thinking about how they all were struggling with what happened last night. The plan was for Emily, Jada, and Fatima to take a shower next, then Mark alone with Madison at the doorway, and then they would all finally head out. Mark still wasn’t sure which direction he wanted to pick. Nobody seemed to have much of an opinion anymore.

So far they hadn’t done any exploring further north except to poke a head out of the other door of the bathroom. It led to a long carpeted corridor three meters wide with eight doors on each side and pleasant skylights in the ceiling. There was also a seventeenth door at the far end. Maybe he would pick that. The large soccer field was to the south in the direction of the cars, but somehow that seemed the wrong direction to take. The huge multi-hexagonal soccer park just looked too unfamiliar.

He thought again of his sister and friends and replied to Fatima’s earlier comment. “It’s not just that. My sister, Ashley and Hannah too, they’re great people, but they’ve never been on their own. My parents are rich, and Ashley’s and Hannah’s are even richer. All three of them are still in high school. I’m not trying to hide anything from them, just giving them a little extra time to adjust. They’ve led sheltered lives, and our situation ... seems so damn strange.”

Fatima nodded back. “I think it’s a great decision to rest and take the time to consider our next move. I wouldn’t have thought of this. You’re taking very good care of us, Mark.” He grinned at the compliment. Fatima continued, “This place is downright strange. Take a look at these Maytag washers.”

Mark took his first close look. “They’re not a washer and dryer?”

“I don’t think so. They appear identical. Superb industrial quality by the looks of them, but where are their controls? And they’re integrated into the steel cabinet system, just like the appliances in the kitchen. Beautiful sleek design and function, but how do you repair something like this; remove the entire row of cabinets?”

“Yeah ... Hannah noticed the same thing with the dishwasher. It was also a Maytag. You just fill it up with dishes and close the door; must run on interior sensors, I guess. It did a great job, really fast too.”

“Wonderful technology ... and this place seems full of it. Strange that a fraternity could afford such opulence.” She paused and reached out to hold Mark’s hand before adding, “So, how much danger do you think we’re in?”

Mark smiled at the warmth of Fatima’s hand against his own, but then frowned. “I hate to say it, but maybe quite a bit. The drug that was used against us, I’ve never heard of anything like it, a total suppression of our social inhibitions. Our primal fears were in complete control.”

Fatima looked thoughtful. “Not just fears, Mark. I think our primal hopes were in control too. The drug didn’t turn us into monsters. It just ... released us somehow. I think it made us show the world who we truly are, in ways we normally never dare.” She paused and frowned. “But I think I agree with you on one point. We survived last night and we survived well. My only guilt is from sexual frolic, and I suspect that’s true of the others as well. Our gentle natures saved us. But the drug in the body of an angry and cruel person, someone who can not see the value in others, the drug there might indeed create a monster.”

Mark sighed. “Yes, and the people who did this to us, I think of them as monsters too, don’t you? They drugged us without our consent, without even our knowledge. It was an awful crime...” He stared at Fatima’s unsure facial expression. “You don’t think so?”

Fatima shrugged. “We understand almost nothing about this place, and what we do know makes no sense. I’d rather keep an open mind about the motivation of the people who drugged us.”

Mark was silent for a long moment, considering her point, and then he slowly nodded. “Yes, I agree with you. You’ve changed my mind.” He looked at her gratefully. “Thanks!”

“My pleasure!”

“Fatima, you’re a foreign exchange student, aren’t you?”

“Yep, from Syria.”

Mark’s face froze. “Syria? Ah...”

Fatima nodded. “It’s really not that surprising anymore. There’ve been tremendous changes...”

Mark’s eyes were full of sympathy. “What a tragedy. Were you there when things really got ugly?”

“For about two years, with my family.”

In great tenderness, Mark asked. “Did they survive?”

“Yes. In Allah’s mercy, we all finally managed to escape.” She gave a deep sigh. “It’s amazing looking back, how senseless it all was ... how vicious...” She reach over and hugged Mark.

Mark hugged back and then released her. He was about to reply when his sister and friends came out of the bathroom dressed, smiling and chatting and drying their hair. Their time to unwind had worked wonders. Mark talked with them as the other three women bathed.

Time: Saturday, 10:43 AM EST, December 22, 2018

With an moderately good charge in their Leo-phones, the group set out north carrying everything they arrived with, plus some food and bottles of water from the kitchen. Their first stop was to check out the rooms off the main corridor north of the bathroom. They appeared to be typical though expensive fraternity dorm rooms.

The rooms were a bit of a puzzle. Like the lounge, they were very spacious, approximately six meters square. They had top-of-the-line furnishings and beautiful gleaming hardwood floors. Large desks, beds beyond king-size, ample shelves for books and closets and chests for clothing. The rooms had all the basic needs plus very pleasant views of the forest or sand parks below.

But had anybody ever lived here? The drawers held piles of fresh towels and linens but no individual clothing and all the book shelves and closets were bare. There were also no decorations on the wall. Each room had distinctive desk lamps and a throw rug or two, but they all looked brand new. It was the group’s consensus that the rooms had never been occupied.

At the northern edge of the corridor of rooms they came to an end wall that had a slightly inward curvature. Outside the building they were about halfway down the lengths of the two enclosed trapezoidal parks. Jada went first through the end door and there they finally found their first stairway, and it was magnificent.

It was a great circular room sixteen meters in diameter, with a dome directly above them of sparkling clear glass supported by ribbing of a golden alloy. There was a four-meter wide annulus of polished translucent light blue stone for the floor, and then a circular open vista with an eight-meter diameter spiraling staircase below. Through the glass dome they could see that further north the sand and forest parks joined, separated only by a pink cobblestone walkway. The walls and stair treads appeared to be a combination of white and dark blue marble with a dark gray granite handrail, with the circular stairs spiraling down.

“This is a fraternity?” Fatima whispered and then gasped. “This room belongs in the palace of a Sultan!”

Emily couldn’t help herself. She fell in love with the design. She peered over the annular railing and exclaimed. “Look how far down it goes! Way below ground level, twenty meters at least! And I think we have access to the parks!”

Jada meanwhile was on her knees examining the floor. “Look at this! No seams at all! It’s as if the entire ring were carved from one giant piece of stone.”

Hannah frowned. “That’s not possible, is it?”

Ashley piped up. “Nah, it’s okay. My parents put in new granite counters in our kitchen. The work crews used filler to make the cracks disappear.”

Jada wasn’t at all convinced but decided to say nothing. There were beautiful swirls embedded in the floor, slightly lighter than the light blue of the expanse, and the swirls were unbroken as far as she could see. The effect was so delicate, it was lost when Jada stood up. She walked over to where Mark was staring at the line between a dome rib and the clear glass. “Noticing the precision?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he whispered back, rubbing his finger against the surface. “Look at this thing. Same insane perfection we saw at the vertex. No discernable joint, just a transition between gold and clear ... Perfectly sharp alignment. How do you build with this kind of detail?” The question went unanswered as the rest of the group joined them.

They hiked down to ground level, a second four-meter circular annulus, and had their first choice to make. There were three possibilities of where to go next, north through an outside door to the cobblestone walkway, around the annulus to a southern door leading to the floor before where they had been, or to continue further down the stairwell. Jada walked around the stone annulus to the southern door and looked back at Mark. He nodded and she entered. The group followed a few seconds later.

It was a game room, and it was huge, the same size of the lounge except for the fact that half the great cylinder of the stairwell room was jugging into it to form the fourth wall. It took Mark a moment to realize what else was so unusual about the room. It appeared to have no electronic games. But there were chess and card tables arranged in several sitting areas and the walls were covered by shelves holding many hundreds, no, it must be thousands of board games.

There were also a few ultra-comfortable looking recliners scattered about that looked more suited for taking a nap as opposed to serious reading. And near the windows by the pine tree park stood a massive and gleaming pool table. The room was an open invitation for care-free play and vegetation. And the window views of the adjacent parks and swimming pool were lovely.

There was also an opposite door leading further south, but Mark didn’t want to spend too much time exploring on this level. If the frat boys had been here, Mark couldn’t imagine them not leaving the room a mess. The first floor seemed pristine and deserted, and the stairwell down had piqued his curiosity. “Come on,” he called. “Let’s check outside and then see what’s below.” A moment later the group was standing on the path of pink cobblestones.

“Of course, of course,” said Emily. The two parks, they form the two halves of the basic hexagonal unit. The circular well, it’s dead center in the middle of the hexagon.”

Mark nodded as he agreed with her. It was a hundred meters back south to the vertex with the elevator, and a hundred meters further north along the cobblestones to the opposite vertex at the far end of the two parks. A door to enter the northern vertex was clearly visible.

View of the hexagonal complex, showing perimeter walkways and 2^nd floor layout

“Wow, feel how warm it is,” commented Hannah. “Definitely above freezing. I think we’ll be getting rain today, not snow.” All eyes went to the clouds above them. They looked very turbulent and had an unusual rolling motion to them.

Jada commented and agreed with Hannah’s guess. She thought the temperature was four or five degrees Celsius and was surprised the weather prediction could be off by that much. The forecast yesterday was for a snowstorm, with temperatures definitely staying below freezing.

Ashley pushed her arms out wide and took a deep breath, savoring the smells of the pines and the damp earth. “Wow, we haven’t had weather this nice in weeks, and smell how clean the air is! I wouldn’t mind grabbing a book and just reading out here for a while.” She stared at the clouds above and added, “as long as doesn’t rain.”

After a few minutes of stretching and enjoying the fresh air, the group went back inside and continued their circular descent. The dome above provided a lot of light, even with the clouds, and there was also recessed lighting built into the circular wall. There was a single large metal door at the bottom of the well, facing south back in the direction of the lounge.

“I think this is a very encouraging sign,” Madison said to Emily, trying to sound hopeful. “We’re at the right level and facing the right direction to return to the underground tunnel. Remember the T-junction in the room by the elevator? It could easily lead right here. It all fits. Sort of...”

“What about the soccer pitch?” Jada thought silently. “If that tunnel last night was more than a hundred meters, I’ll...” She didn’t finish the thought.

Hannah joined in Madison’s optimism. “Maybe Kappa Alpha called this stairwell the Stairway To Heaven. It is very beautiful.”

Emily blew a load of air through her cheeks, “But that’s not what the instructions said. It didn’t say go down the tunnel on your right for party #6. I still don’t get it.” She took another deep breath. “I’ll say one thing though. You guys get me to where we got on the elevator, I’ll get us the rest of the way to our cars, no problem. That’s the core issue. The elevator ride is the one part of our journey that I don’t know how to retrace.”

Emily walked to the door and placed her hand upon it. It looked and felt very solid, and there were adjacent eyebolts in the door and frame. The door could easily be pinned shut from this direction. “Fearless leader, do you want to do the honors?”

Wondering if it would open, Mark walked up to the door and also put his hand upon it, feeling the cool metal. Then he turned the handle and pulled. The door opened easily and silently. Mark went in first. Each person felt a bit of a shock as they walked through. What was on the other side was the last thing they were expecting.

The door was a portal through the back wall of a simple changing booth, the second of five along a flat wall on the other side of their entrance well. The new place was reasonably well lit, and Mark went first down a short corridor. He turned and found himself in a women’s clothing store.

Hannah was right behind him, and she was so surprised she bumped into Mark as she came out of the changing area. “My gosh!” she said laughing in disbelief. “It’s a Dress Barn!”

Mark nodded numbly and took a few steps This was so different than all the empty shells of stores they passed last night. This store was packed with clothes and looked ready for business. The only thing missing were the employees and muzak. But except for themselves, the only other noise was the faint white noise of the ventilation. Otherwise the place was silent and deserted.

And it was an oddly shaped store with shoebox proportions. Mark estimated about seven by thirty meters. The changing rooms and a set of stairs heading down ran along the length of one of the walls along the long axis. Except for the crazy door through the changing booth, the stairs were their only means to leave. He thought to look at the time, 11:07 AM, and then stared in amazement at his sister.

The college women were still staring around the room amazed, but his sister and her two high school friends were already looking through the racks of merchandise with obvious interest. Madison was inspecting a selection of blouses. “Hey, Ashley! They’ve got some nice stuff in here!”