Down the Rabbit Hole

What had happened? Had he died?

He turned his head, looked down a mile-long hallway lined with cubes, the doorless entries expressing nothing, and saw only a row of cavities in an oversized mouth. He walked a few steps over and peered into the next cubicle. An Asian guy wearing a plaid shirt and a thick black watch was hunched over his desk, gazing at a wall full of screens.

Thank god, he thought, the human presence calming him.

“Excuse me,” he said, moving toward the opening. “Hello? Excuse me.”

The guy didn’t respond, just moved his head fractionally from side to side as his gaze jumped from one screen to another. Had he not heard, or had he heard and decided to ignore him? Jeremy’s attention shifted to the wall of screens. They were like nothing he’d ever seen before. They had no edges, no glass, no seeming substance at all, except for the myriad images, charts, documents and moving pictures they seemed to be displaying. And there were dozens of them, some larger than others; a few were as large as televisions.

“I’m sorry,” he said louder, unnerved by the guy’s absorption. “Can I ask you something?” Ordinarily he wouldn’t bother someone so deep in concentration, but panic was building inside him. What was this place?

Still no response. Jeremy moved to the next cubicle. Another guy, this one heavyset and impeccably dressed in a medium-gray suit with white shirt and blue tie. He wore fashionable glasses, and he too stared at his wall full of screens.

Jeremy cleared his throat. “Hi,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but can I ask you something?”

Same thing. No response. Could he be invisible? Was this some kind of Ghost of Workplace Future–type experience? He touched the man’s shoulder. It felt real. But the suited man did little more than blink and reach up to brush the spot that Jeremy had touched as if ridding himself of a spider.

Jeremy moved on. A woman inhabited the next one, brown hair, business attire, good posture, deaf as a post. Two more men, equally oblivious. He halted then, listening more closely. There seemed to be people in every cube, but there was not a sound to be heard. He walked the outer hallway created by cubicles on one side and a wall of the room on the other, passing one cubicle after another, all of them occupied by someone—man or woman, young or old, black or white, fat or thin, neat or messy—none of whom paid him one iota of attention. It freaked him out.

After walking the length of the hall—which took no small amount of time—he stood on tiptoe, only to see a static sea of zigzagging cubicle walls. Above them lay an endless expanse of rectangular fluorescent lights; in front of him, an endless gray hallway. It was dizzying.

His heart raced, and sweat broke out along his hairline. He turned to go back to where he started, hoping to find the way out, but all he discovered when he arrived back at the empty cube was a name tag attached to the outer wall.

Jeremy Abbott

The sight of his own name caught him in the solar plexus like a punch.

He gasped, then forced an exhale.

He was in hell. He had to be. Or some really, really weird dream. But he hadn’t fallen asleep and he felt more lucid than he had in years. Also more terrified.

His hand reached again for the cell phone case on his belt, but the moment he touched it he remembered it was empty. He’d only wanted to know the time. He looked around the room again, this time for a clock, and realized with a sinking feeling that there was none. In hell, he thought, time probably didn’t exist.