Kapitel 4: Like Birds in a Cage

After exiting the auditorium I found myself in a nondescript concrete hallway, which extended in both directions. I couldn't be sure, but I suspected that this hallway encircled the auditorium, providing the only way in or out. I moved in the direction that I thought would lead me opposite where the stage was. In my limited experience with theaters and auditoriums, the primary entrance was usually opposite the stage.

My guess paid off and, after a short flight of stairs, I found myself staring at glass, double doors leading out of the building. A small victory, but something to keep myself positive nonetheless. No one was in this area of the building, but I could see some silhouettes outside. Probably the people who exited before me. Or more people in the same situation as us. Somehow I didn't think it would be so easy to find the way out. Maybe we are in a large complex, or worse.

Nonetheless, it was pointless to stand here trying to guess. Only one way to find out.

As I left the building and saw the people outside, I recognized some of their faces. People I had glanced at just a few minutes ago when I first took in my surroundings. It's not likely I could remember their faces in detail, but I had enough awareness to realize I had seen them inside. Especially the short blond girl with the large backpack. She stood in the middle of the road looking to the sky. She wore a dark coat that went down to her knees, but was unbuttoned at the front. Her hair was golden, and it shined against her fair skin. The soft features of her face were charming. She had a small nose and not so thin lips of a pink hue. On her hand, a few trinkets such as rings with colorful stones and bracelets of intricately designed metals, augmented her sophisticated look. She seemed extremely out of place against the backdrop of gray.

Everyone seemed keen on keeping their distances from one another as we found ourselves surrounded by concrete buildings of varying heights. Like the hallway, they were all lacking any color or unique features. Or any features at all for that matter. They were all bare concrete skeletons, with a plentiful number of glass windows. I moved away from the door and looked at the building I just left. It was a squat and wide construction. It reminded me of a theater or cinema, but without any of the colorful facade one would expect. No signboard, nothing. Just the concrete outer shell.

I kept scanning my surroundings and eventually looked up at the sky only to see something that almost made me fall on my ass. A giant digital time stamp hovered in the sky like some sort of projected hologram. Its solid navy blue color was visible even in the morning sun.

23:21:59

23:21:58

23:21:57

I immediately remembered the words of the… emissary thing. Everyday we would be given the opportunity to grow and become stronger. Was that somehow related to the ominous clock? What was that anyway? A dooms-everyday-clock?

Chuckling at my own joke, I realized how silly I would have looked if someone had been paying attention to me. But with so many weird things, why would they?

There I go again, worrying about unnecessary things.

Well, I better keep moving. I won't learn anything by standing here, laughing at my own jokes like an idiot. I chose a random direction and decided to follow it in as straight a line as I could. As I walked further away from the auditorium building I realized how weird the buildings were. No matter how tall or wide, they all seemed to contain a few pieces of furniture selected from chairs, desks, end tables, couches and lockers. If their amount being so repetitive wasn't enough, they all looked the fucking same. Like everyone decided to buy from the same Walmart sale. This whole place felt like a city model made by some lazy and equally incompetent twat.

I don't know when it entered my line of sight, but it had probably been visible for a while and I had missed it in my distraction. When I finally took notice of it, I felt like slapping myself. How could I have missed a giant pyramid in the middle of this fucking nondescript city?

It wasn't stupidly tall, but it was enough to barely peek over the tops of the scattered four story buildings in the area If it had been taller, the line of buildings in front of the auditorium wouldn't have been enough to hide it from unsuspecting eyes. But now I had an almost direct line of sight towards it and the more I looked at it, the more I felt it was wrong. Like the abandoned building in your street that everyone said was haunted when you were kid. The further away I could be from it, the better. Following my instincts I decided to change my direction and travel directly away from the ominous anomaly.

Lost in my own imagination of what could possibly lurk inside that horror infested pyramid I didn't see the wall in front of me until my face warned me. Painfully. Rubbing my throbbing nose I looked up feeling stupid. Only to be greeted by the sight of nothing. The city continued on as it had been for the last fifteen minutes. Probing with my hands, I moved forward. As if to defy reality itself, my hand stopped midair against... something. I used both hands and started patting against the mysterious barrier. Although I want to say it was an invisible wall - considering all that has happened today, it wasn't even that incredible - it didn't feel like one. There was no texture and no temperature. It was like I was touching air, but I just couldn't move forward. No matter how much I pushed.

Now I was curious.

I decided to test this thing. I took a few coins from my pocket, change from the turkey sandwich, and started throwing them higher and higher. But no matter how high I threw them, they were just deflected and fell back towards me. At one point I threw it so high that the coin seemed to hit the barrier at an angle. If that was really what happened it meant that this thing was probably shaped like a dome and would cover the entire area. Now I was committed. I was going to find out if there were any holes in it.

I left the fallen coins to mark where I started my journey, and with one hand on the barrier, I started walking clockwise. I would follow the entire perimeter or circumference of this thing out of sheer stubbornness. And also because I had no idea what else to do. I hoped it wouldn't take too long. People usually said that I had a fast walk, so maybe that would give me an edge on this task.

After a few minutes of walking, I saw another person that had discovered the same thing as me. A guy dressed in denim and a social shirt. He seemed to be around my age, maybe older. He had a fashionable haircut, higher in the middle and shaved on the sides. Many times I had thought of sporting one of those, but I always backed out, afraid that it might lower my value in the eyes of the companies. Sometimes I wondered if maybe I was trying too hard.

"It's a no go. I have been following it for the last few minutes, it seems to be the same thing all the way." I spoke before I even thought about it properly. I had been talking to myself for a while now. I was probably craving for some conversation about all this bizarreness more than I realized.

"Yeah. This is some real weird shit, bro. You trying to go all the way around?" He asked me back, without taking his eyes off his hands pressing the barrier.

"Something like that. I suspect it will be the same thing everywhere, but I might as well give it a go." I shrugged. I was being more honest than I thought I should, but fuck it. We were all in the same boat. I had no reason to be suspicious of the dude.

"Yea. Probably. Aight. Good luck, bro." With a curt nod he finally acknowledged my presence. But as soon as he did, he turned around and moved away from the barrier. I didn't feel particularly inclined to insist on conversing with him, so I just continued on my way.

After a little more than two hours of walking, I finally reached the spot where I had tossed my coins against the barrier. I had to dodge buildings once in a while. Unlike many of the other buildings in the area, these had no obvious way inside, so I was forced to go around them.

On the way, I had two more encounters, but they didn't amount to much. No one seems to be in a sharing mood. We just exchanged a few words politely, but nothing noteworthy.

More importantly, I might be able to determine the area contained within the barrier. If I were to assume I was walking at around eight kilometers per hour, and I know it took me approximately two hours to go around it, I can calculate the circumference. With the circumference, I can then calculate the area inside. Of course, this is all assuming we are inside a dome. Which is probably true since I didn't find any sharp angles. Well, it could be an ellipse, but I am going to assume it's a dome. Why? Because it's easier. After some quick math I reached the conclusion that the dome surrounds an area of twenty square kilometers.

Which means… absolutely jack shit. Why the fuck do I keep wasting my time on useless pieces of information? I should be worried about the doomsday clock on my head or the haunted pyramid that sits dead center of this bloody cage.

I sighed.

It wasn't like I had any idea on how to acquire information on any of those two things at the moment. Not even three hours had passed since I left the auditorium and I was already starting to feel a little dejected. And hungry. All that walking sure opened my appetite. Unfortunately, I had brought nothing with me. I should have bought a snack, not just the turkey sandwich. Well, if I knew I would be in this situation I would have brought a lot of different things, not only a bag of snacks.

Using the pyramid as a reference point it shouldn't be a problem to find my way back to the auditorium. If anything, at least I could check how things had developed in the meantime. Maybe that Johann guy and his group had reached a consensus on something.

Nope. None at all. They were still engaging in a discussion of what to do. They had sent some people outside and, after an hour of walking around, they had come back with no answers, only more questions. They seemed to be getting nowhere with their roundabout approach and their problems seemed to be piling on as hunger and thirst was starting to become a concern.

Someone was currently questioning why the exploration group had decided to avoid entering the surrounding buildings. And I realized I had done just the same. I had just automatically dismissed them because of all the weird Walmart looking furniture, but I hadn't stopped to check if there was something inside. Feeling double stupid I quietly stood from my chair, placed a few meters away from the group, and made my way towards the exit. Again.