Sunday, March 27 was the day of the headquarter's presidential tour. It was also the day in which this story takes place. Everything everywhere else went indelibly normal during this yearless date. But at the Intricate International headquarters things went nasty.
"I am right here," the president replied to Cuijj, the master architect. The brilliant Cuijj was axiomatically known for his marvelous and sublime buildings. Like most master architects, Cuijj intentionally put one flaw in his design. What Cuijj did not intentionally do was have the flaw effect the building.
Cuijj, staring at his blueprints in the Mixistrixin Room, held a yellow-and-black emergency umbrella over his head to shelter the blueprints and himself from the thunderstorm occurring in the room.
"I know you're where you are," said Cuijj, "but the directions I gave you, sir, were to lead you to the Mixistrixin Room. Could you please describe the room you are in right now? I may find where you went wrong."
President Gary L. Tareff, his two bodyguards, and a dead tour guide examined the room. "The most outstanding feature in this room is its wall-length sofa."
"That is in the Mixistrixin Room, but it also is another room..." Cuijj scanned his blueprints rapidly to find the other wall-length sofa room. As the corner began dampen from the intense humidity, he spotted the room. "The other room is the Strakspilk Room. Does your room have two doors or three?"
The president counted three, so did the bodyguards, but not the dead guide. "If one isn't fake, we are in a three-door room."
"That can't be right," said Cuijj worried as a worried person could ever be. "Go to the center table and look at the serial number underneath."
"Okay," responded Mr. Tareff. He sent one of his bodyguards to check the table. The president was too paranoid of the building since his guide was killed by a flying lobster hiding behind a fire extinguisher.
"Z117-861-LJI," said the bodyguard named Binln after he read it. "I repeat, Zee One Seventeen Dash Eight Sixty-one Dash Eljay Eye."
Gripping his transceiver tenaciously, the president relayed the serial number back to the master architect. While hearing the number being read to him, Cuijj read the number under his table - Z117-861-LJI.
"You seem to be in the exact same room I am standing in, President Tareff," cried Cuijj. "Is there a thunderstorm going on in your room?"
"No. Just your average room atmosphere," he replied with a mild humor.
"I try to avoid making my designs average, sir." Cuijj decided to think as if the President did not. "Listen sir. I will exit the room and then re-enter. Maybe there is a trick in the door mechanism."
"Did you install the 'trick?'" sedately asked President Tareff. After Cuijj's negative answer, Tareff said, "I thought so."
Folding the blueprints under his arm and holding the emergency umbrella over his head, Cuijj approached the door and went to the other side of it. The hallway sang murky, haunting Cuijj. Quickly he reentered the Mixistrixin Room, the one with the thunderstorm.
"Perhaps if you did the same," remarked the freaked Cuijj. "At the same time conceivably?" suggested the President.
Cuijj answered with a poorly developed sentence. "Let's have it a go."
Both the President and the architect exited the room and then entered it again. "In the same room?" asked Cuijj being in the same stormy weather.
"No," gulped the President. "But my bodyguards and the dead tour guide is." President Tareff now stood in a room full of escalators heading up and down and a ten-foot burning candle standing in the center of the room. The rising escalators lead up to a yellow light while the sinking escalators lead down to a red light. Examining the candle's flame, Tareff discovered it was green. "There is symbolism in this room."
"I suppose there is symbolism in every room," retorted Cuijj. "Life is full of subliminal symbols. Some people live through symbols while others live through face values."
"These symbols are obvious, I think." Tareff looked at the base of the candle and saw the black wax ooze closer over the shiny white floor to his newly polished shoes. "It spooks me."
"If you don't like being in that room I never developed, go out the door you came in," said Cuijj through the handy-dandy walkie-talkie.
After turning 180 degrees in less than 1.8 seconds, the President ascertained the door he passed through was an elevator door painted royal blue. He was about to push one of the direction buttons when he remembered the eerie symbolism, and saw the buttons directed left and right. "Did you design any horizontal elevators?"
"No," Cuijj trembled as the storm let up in his Mixistrixin Room. "I have no well-educated suggestions for you, sir. Choose a way out for yourself."
The black wax seeped closer to the brown shiny shoes. "I must move quickly," whimpered the President to himself. "These shoes must not be ruined."
Meanwhile in the other Mixistrixin Room, the two bodyguards watched two ceiling fans fly into the room. Binln said, "Oh no."
"This is crazy," said the other bodyguard, Qrovl. "I can't trust my eyes anymore."
"Or my nose," Binln said as a strong odor of sugary green fruit juice filled the room. "It's making me thirsty."
The sun shone brightly and intensely in Cuijj's Mixistrixin Room. "Either my flaw did more damage than I thought or this building is haunted." Cuijj decided to continue thinking to himself aloud since he liked it. "I did not build this Intricate International's headquarters on a cemetery or sacred burial grounds. No occult performed any rituals on this site. I don't know any witches or warlocks who would wish to curse this building or me. Maybe I'm dreaming. Maybe it is the end of the world. I need solid evidence!"
"I'll take the rising escalators!" the President finally decided. He hopped over the parts of the floor covered by the black wax, and settled on the first rising step of an escalator. "To the yellow light!" he yelled point upward. The rising escalators moved an inch every ten seconds, he noticed. "Good-bye capricious chamber with your giant candle. Enough of your blatant symbolism. I'm heading for the yellow light. Not the red light downstairs or the blue elevators or the black wax. Going up I am!"
Looking for firm evidence, Cuijj left weatherful Mixistrixin Room. The unlit corridor, where he now stood, had fire extinguishers hanging in every possible wall space on both sides. "I can battle a fire," mumbled the master architect. Once he took his first step down the dark hall, an extinguisher burst into flames at the end of the passage where the elevator lies. In a flash, Cuijj tore the closest fire extinguisher off the wall and rushed down the hall. "My building's not going down in flames!" he screamed as he pulled the lock out. He then fired the smothering chemicals upon the fire, but they weren't smothering chemicals. "Gasoline?" he asked recognizing the petroleum smell. The fire spread all over the wall where he fired.
Finally President Tareff reached the floor which emitted the yellow light to the floor below. The reason for the light's tawny color was that the intense white stage lights shone on the dinner table's new tarnish.
"This must be the dining hall."
"It must be," laughed the hostess answering a different obvious statement as she came through the door on the far side of the chamber. Following her was a dastardly party of twenty-one dressed in white three-piece suits and red curly hair. Perhaps the hair was wigs. It appeared so on most guests. The hostess was wearing a fur coat inside out with a tall coonskin cap complimenting her wiry hair. "Before we eat, we shall be entertained by Shibby Loner and Associates." As she sat, they sat, and President Tareff witnessed the delirium.
Bursting through the door, two high school basketball teams entered the room. Out of the ceiling two basketball hoops lowered. All the players jumped onto the dinner table and began playing a game of organized basketball while the dinner guests watched intently and seriously.
Letting the hall burn at its pleasure, master architect Cuijj waited in the elevator to reach the basement.
Next to him stood a life-sized Russian doll. "I suppose it’s impossible for you to take on a conversation," said Cuijj amusing himself. After a sixty-one second minute, the elevator ultimately touched bottom.
Instead of sliding open, the elevator doors fell out revealing the forested basement. As Cuijj exited the elevator, the Russian doll said, "I suppose so," answering Cuijj's last question.
Flinching to the unexpected response, the master architect looked back to see the elevator cab being pulled up by a hook and rope.
Meanwhile, nearly dying of thirst, Binln and Qrovl still stood still in the Mixistrixin Room. Instead of thirst-quenching beverages, food meandered into the room. Circus peanuts traveled on a wave of molasses from the electrical outlets. "Hungry?" asked Qrovl.
"No," Binln replied shaking his head nervously. "Thirsty."
The tabletop basketball game ended and the players left. "What are you doing here, sir?" the hostess asked President Tareff. "You were not invited."
"What are you doing here, ma'am? You were not intended to exist," Gary snapped being that he was quite agitated with the nonsense and derangement. "This building is meant for Intricate International not for lunatics entertaining themselves to tomfoolery."
"Everyone has their own place. Everybody has his or her own time. We exist here. We exist now," the hostess retorted in slight anger.
"So do I, but you don't belong here, and you don't belong now. Get out of this building!" screamed Gary Tareff. Without hesitation, the hostess and the guests disappeared from the table. The table returned to its clean, untrodden state. "I fixed it. The building's fixed."
"Little," mumbled an oak tree as Cuijj passed her. It is harder to find an installed flaw its location has transformed into a forest.
Cuijj stepped through a doorway that would have led into a room, but there are no more inner walls due to the forest. When the master architect finished his feat of stepping through the entry, a wall made of multicolored television static erupted behind him. The same fabricated four meters in front of him. Both static walls hummed the word, "Do."
Once Cuijj perceived that word, two walls of plaster developed abruptly to his sides. Realizing he was trapped, Cuijj tried to phase through the static wall behind him. He was zapped.
"You!" shouted a tall woman resembling the Gibson Girl of the 1890's. Spinning around to see her and a levitating small Victorian table. Instead saying anything else, the Gibson Girl pointed at him.
"Know," loudly moaned a short man wearing a two-piece suit and a green hat with an index card in the front of it. His index card had the written word KNOW on it. He crossed his arms and looked at the floor.
The bizarre scenery haunted Cuijj, and kept him tacit for a while. The Gibson Girl, the levitating table, and the green-topped man did not do much but freak.
Binln and Qrovl watched an elephant eat every piece of food in the Mixistrixin Room. After a few
minutes, the elephant transformed into a leather camel. Ignoring its mutation, the camel still devoured the morsels.
"What's keeping us in here?" Qrovl asked.
Once Binln found out that Qrovl was asking him a question, he uttered the most intelligent answer possible. "I don't know."
Qrovl continued his nature of questioning, "Shall we?" As he asked that question, he pointed the door.
"I think we ought to," Binln answered. The two bodyguards headed for the door, got to the door, opened the door, went through the door, and closed the door behind them. While they went through that process, the leather camel changed into hump-backed penguin.
The other side of the door was the dining hall where Tareff grinned of his accomplishment. His grin turned into a smile when he saw his two bodyguards come out the door. "Binln! Qrovl! I fixed the turmoil! No more aberration!"
In only a matter of seconds, a greasy beast of ungodly segmented proportions hastened into the dining hall. With its diamond-sharp claws, it seized Binln and conveyed him to his loathsome death. "I think that was aberration," mumbled Qrovl as he trembled.
Still in the peculiar and static-walled room, Cuijj attempted contact, verbal contact. "Absolve me, eccentric ones. Why do you haunt my tower so?"
The Gibson girl replied with a tiny burp hidden behind her fist. She then returned to her pointing ways.
"May I fix my flaw?" Cuijj asked moving closer to the short man in the green hat. "I would please me so to unflaw this building."
"Daniel in the lion's den," grinned the man wearing the index card. Soon his grin disappeared from his face.
"Symbolism," Cuijj pointed out to himself and the readers. "I must be Daniel and you must be the lions. The reason for you not hurting me is because I trust in the Lord." Cuijj paused for a moment of deliberation. "You know...I'm not much of a Christian." His thought process hindered. "Something must be symbolized by the Lord. Who...or what?"
As the master architect took too long to ponder the symbolism that may not even be metaphorical language, President Tareff and Qrovl journeyed into a narrow access. "The tour guide, Binln, and who's next?" Qrovl worried aloud.
"Let's try to exit," suggested the President of Intricate International. Finally windows were at their disposal on the left side of the long hall.
"Look!" screamed Qrovl running to peep out the transparent glass sheets on the wall. The president joined in the surveillance. They found out they were look out the back of the building.
An entirely new wing jutted out of the center of the Intricate International headquarters. "That's not supposed to be there!" announced Tareff. "This building is changing shape."
"Maybe it's a shape-shifter," broached Qrovl.
"If it is, Cuijj is a brilliant virtuoso of biological architecture," Tareff said gazing at the new wing glowing in the night.
"Let's go!" yelled Qrovl as he started down the hall.
"We don't even know what's there." Tareff continued to gaze at the accidental annex. Just as the sight of the expansion began to hypnotize the president, a scratching noise reverberated all around the corridor. "L..le..Let's go," he stuttered.
"I have trust in my architecture intellect. This aptitude made me the architect I am...and it also created you!" announced Cuijj. "I must have subconsciously created this monstrosity through my flaw. As a matter of fact, I have never made a flaw that entails the electrical, plumbing, foundation, heating and framework in one small area. That one area sums up the entire tower."
"Congratulations!" smiled and clapped the Gibson girl before she and the table disappeared.,
"Revelations!" smirked and acclaimed the short man before he and the static-walls disappeared.
"My own accomplishment is testing me." The basement once again looked like a forest. "Now...to uncover the flaw." Cuijj retreated from the eerie area.
Running instead of walking, President Tareff and Qrovl came to the doors that would lead to the new wing of the headquarters tower. Instead of a doorknob, there rested two unlabeled buttons side-by-side.
"We'll both push one," the president decided. They did just that. What they did triggered the door to slide open to reveal a lush elevator cab with a small circular sofa made from the finest Far East fabrics in the middle.
"How nice," Qrovl remarked.
"Get in!" Tareff said fearing the beast and pushing Qrovl inside.
When both were inside the lavish elevator, the padded doors silently sealed. "Welcome to Air Bhutan. We are now taking off from level twelve and will be headed towards the Destination. Please stay sitted if you do not wish to stand. We, here at Bengalair, urge all our passengers not to lay down on our newly renovated rug."
"Are we on a jet or an elevator?" asked Qrovl not knowing if he should trust his eyes or his ears.
"I hope it is still an elevator," Gary stated as doubt began to enter his brain. The sound of jet engines hummed seemingly from the outside of the cabin.
Cuijj noticed a clearing in the forested basement: no trees, no thicket, no owls, and no enclosed weird area. The ceiling lights turned to stars as Cuijj vacated the weald. A brisk frigidity encompassed and finally appropriated the warm feeling he once had.
"The Destination has been reached," fluidly announced the baroque elevator. The paisley and mantra-like asterix checkerboard split in half as the doors opened. Beyond the doors, the roof of the supplementary ell waited for President Tareff and Qrovl to tread on it.
"The roof of a non-existent annex," mumbled Gary adjusting his tie as if his gulp was twice the size of his throat. Silently but quickly the Eastern elevator dissolved from permanence.
Qrovl watched the shadows skulk behind the windows of the original structure. Every light on the fifty-story building proved their efficacy by shining through the windows. "Who pays the electric bill?" asked Qrovl.
"It's cold out here," said Cuijj as he walked towards the president and his bodyguard. "Where are we?"
"I was hoping you knew," grumbled President Tareff. "Was this wing in your blueprints?"
Cuijj shook his head while it was in the process of thinking. "Has anyone ever been inside the annex?"
"No," Qrovl spoke for the president and himself. "We got here by a jet elevator."
"I didn't need that information, but thanks anyway."
"What's on your mind, Cuijj?" Gary asked hoping someone had a clue for an exit besides jumping fifty stories down.
"I thought that my building flaw may have been the cause of this turmoil. I placed it in the basement, but it was not where I remembered. It could have emigrated to this new adjunct. We must get in. There should be an access inlet."
Cuijj foraged for an entry. Qrovl soon joined in the search. The president watched the two scrounge.
"No door here!" shouted Qrovl. After moving a few meters away, he said it again. "No door here!"
"Just yell when you've found the door," remarked Cuijj who then looked down to discover an entrance.
"The door is here!" Gary and Qrovl scuttled to the door near the edge of the tower.
PART TWO (includes the amazing adventure in the annex)
Master architect Cuijj, President Gary L. Tareff and his bodyguard Qrovl fell into the top flight of the cabalistic annex. "This must be the leather floor," Cuijj remarked noticing the floors and walls made out of 100% tanned leather. Ten-foot lava lamp marbles stood in the four corners of the leather room.
Oddness made panic strike the president of Intricate International. "Door. Is there a door? If there is, we must pass through it."
Scanning every leather wall, Cuijj found a discolored leather section on the wall behind them. "A possible portal."
The president with his bodyguard following scurried to the potential door. Soon they discovered the lack of a doorknob. "Give it a push," Tareff told Qrovl. He pushed; they entered the new room. Cuijj decided to remain in the leather room.
Grandfather clocks, simultaneously ticking, sat in the pews of the cathedral. Meanwhile the altar was a huge popcorn machine spitting buttered corn all over the rostrum. A toddler played the pipe organ professionally while singing random words, "Bike! Cloak! Mouse! Gingerbread! Clockwork!"
Tareff and Qrovl walked up the cathedral as if they were going to get married. "I wonder what time it is," Qrovl pondered. He glanced at the nearest clock to his right and discovered the face of a tiger in the clock. "Tiger in the clock!"
The president looked at the nearest clock to his left and saw an elephant's face in the clock. "Elephant!"
Qrovl walked down a row of pews to spew out the names of the animals he saw. "Baboon! Zebra! Squirrel! Kangaroo! Seagull! Fox! Gecko!"
"The wild kingdom in clocks in a cathedral," mumbled Tareff stating the obvious. "Let's try to analyze the popcorn machine."
"Why would animals in clocks want to worship popcorn with a baby at the organ?" Qrovl asked as he joined Tareff approaching the altar. On their way to the altar, the toddler began playing carousel music.
Behind the altar, on the purple wall, hung a stained glass decagon with a picture of a nun flying on a broom. Painted on the banners were chinchillas and walruses with the passage THE DIAMOND SEALS AWAY THE TEALEAF.
Sitting on the altar were a large wooden ladle and a plastic yellow urn. On both objects, the words inscribed were TOTEM. A lantern burned dimly next to a bowl of oranges.
The popcorn machine smelled buttery and oily, but did not tempt the tastes of Tareff and Qrovl. "Why is it worshipped? The popcorn looks normal as it smells strong."
"Possibly it is the mightiest popcorn in the world," suggested Qrovl.
"That doesn't explain why animals in clocks worship the thing." After the president said "the thing," the popcorn machine vibrated itself invisible. "It's sensitive to our examination."
The podium next to the altar was fronted with pine and topped with marble. The rest was made of glass. Sealed in the glass was the master architect Cuijj.
"Cuijj, what are you doing in the podium?" asked Tareff. Obviously he could not respond. "Qrovl, smash the glass without harming him."
Qrovl made use of a nearby microphone stand and shattered the side of the podium. Out came Cuijj with a famous adage, "Thank you."
The shattering of the podium glass awoken the sedate animals from their clocks. All of them chimed twelve o'clock. "I think it would be wise to leave the scene in celerity." Seconds passed and the trio retreated through the reputed priest's door.
No longer inside the cathedral, Cuijj and company discovered their surroundings as a hallway in a hotel. Tiny plastic chandeliers hung lissomely over the rather-trudged navy blue carpet. Muffled sounds of television, radio, and baby meandered through the numbered doors (104, 105, 106...) and into the ears of the crew. Forsaken trays of last night's room service sat on the floor ready for the housekeepers to take them away. "Holiday Inn?" guessed Qrovl.
"More of a Ramadaesque type of hotel," commented the president sniffing the breakfast air.
After further scrutiny, Cuijj settled the uninteresting dispute. "Sheraton it is. You can tell by the--"
President Tareff's stomach interrupted Cuijj with a growl, and reminded the trio of their appetite. "Fluffy omelets garnished with the finest cheeses of France," Gary described his stomach's desire.
"Buttermilk pancakes smothered in steaming Vermont maple syrup," Cuijj said describing the edible images floating out of eating range. "Standing next to the warm plate of flapjacks is a tall glass of freshly squeezed Valencia orange juice."
"Why not Florida?" Qrovl asked. When he got no reply, he described his early morning craving. "A bowl of King Vitamin and whole milk topped with a cup of sugar."
"Not your traditional breakfast," Cuijj responded.
"'Cause it's a continental breakfast," retorted Qrovl. In seconds he met the floor after tripping over a tray of half-eaten bagels.
"Cut the slapstick, Qrovl," the president snapped. "I see the end of the hall." Two swinging doors with circular windows closed the brightness behind them. "I smell the end of the hall." Along the saccharin current floated the aroma of buttered toast and grapefruit. "I feel the end of the hall." The warmth of the grilled waffles and hash browns permeated around the uplifted spirits of Cuijj, Tareff and Qrovl.
"I am about to enter the end of the hall," President Tareff lamented as he softly pushed open the doors. Breakfast is not a visual pleasure; it is an olfactory pleasure. They walked into the kitchen blind.
The syrupy smell attacked their senses, and lied to their mind. As they opened their eyes, they discovered themselves in a gravel hallway. "Where's breakfast?" asked Qrovl.
"I did not consume it physically, but sensually," smiled Cuijj high on the vacant fumes of his buttermilk pancakes.
A wall of bricks worn by slag towered to their left, and another one to their right stood the same. In the valley of gravel, which they walked upon, Cuijj discovered the slight declining of the path. "We're going down," he coughed matter-of-factly.
"So?" Qrovl preferred to go forward then upward.
Gary Tareff thought for a while, and could not decide. "Shall we turn back?"
"We'd be going nowhere...just tracing our steps," Qrovl reminded.
Cuijj finalized the decision. "We are on the top floor. We want to get down. Let's go down."
"Downwards!" shouted the president of Intricate International. "Wherever it may lead us." The crunching of gravel indicated their journey's perpetuity.
Looking up, the brick walls did not stop: infinite towers. Looking forward, the end could not be seen: infinite descent. It was a straight and narrow path. Black and gray gravel crunched under scuffed workshoes. Red, brown, and sienna bricks blocked away the hopeful reality on both sides. Qrovl is going where he wants to go. Cuijj is going where he thinks he should go. Tareff doesn't no where to go, and he's the president.
A thought struck Cuijj. "Time!"
Tareff instinctively revealed his wristwatch from beneath his cufflinks. Only the hour hand lay under the watch's glass. "Nine. The hour hand is pointing where the nine should be."
"What do you mean?" Cuijj stopped. Qrovl continued forward.
The president moved to his right to show Cuijj, but the hand pointed downwards. "Six?" he asked himself. "This can't be right." He moved around and gazed at his watch. "This watch is a compass pointing to directly to our left!"
"Let me see," Cuijj demanded. He got what he demanded. The watch/compass pointed to the left.
"So...north must to our left, and we're headed east." The annex they were on ran north to south, remembered Cuijj. "It can't be right."
"Maybe it's pointing towards the exit," suggested Tareff.
Cuijj gave up too easily. "The wall's in the way. You can't knock down an astronomical tower."
Tareff wasn't paying attention. He watched Qrovl disappear in the distance. "Qrovl went down," he mumbled.
Cuijj did not hear due to his conceding attitude. "Is there any chance that you have a sledgehammer or mallet?"
"I've got a gavel in my office," Tareff replied. "Qrovl's gone."
"What?"
"He went down."
"We're a dyad," Cuijj stated as he put his left palm on the brick wall. The wall sponged the architect's fist. "Well, well. It's not a real wall after all." Cuijj walked straight through the enormous barrier.
"Crazy building," Tareff sighed as he followed Cuijj into the unknown.
A hallway was the unknown, a hallway full of doors. President Tareff looked behind to see what exactly he passed through: an ordinary door. Curiosity led him to open that door revealing another hallway.
"The maze of passageways!" Cuijj smiled excepting his fate in a fun house. "They say life is full of illusions...and here we are: life!"
"You've blown a fuse," commented Tareff. "You need water."
He tried to calm the architect down, but Cuijj disappeared through a door. Cuijj found himself coming out of a ceiling in another hallway. "They all look the same from up here!" He laughed at his own joke and fell to the floor.
Through another door, Cuijj found cement steps going down to a lightbulb-lit floor. Once there, he found another stairway going up to another doorway. Going through that door, Cuijj came up from the floor. "Madness," he tittered.
Meanwhile, Tareff sat on the black and blue carpeted floor. To keep himself company, he started singing "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore." As he repeated it a fifth time, the carpet changed from black and blue to green. "Oh my my," he groused.
After going through a window that became a door, Cuijj grew fatigued. "This is fun yet mad yet tiring. I must rest." Once Cuijj noticed he was talking to himself, he stopped. But then, the hall lights started talking to him.
"Bathe yourself!" talked a light.
"Smother your stench in soap!" spoke another.
"Please putrefy in some other corridor!" yet another said.
Not accepting the fact that the lights were really talking, Cuijj thought it was part of his own delusion.
"Quit sweating like a rhinoceros or some other large mammal," moaned a light.
"You smell like a large mammal's fecal matter," groaned another.
"Mammals - they all smell," yet another lamented.
"Thank the Luminary that we don't smell. We don't even have olfactory sensation!" laughed a fourth light, but soon stopped because they don't know how they are perceiving or living.
"We're lights!" screamed a light. "We're supposed to be inanimate. All lights, die!" The hallway became the pitch black of darkness.
Somewhere else, Qrovl was wandering through downtown Pittsburgh when he came to a hallway intersecting the middle of a bridge crossing the Allegheny. "What's this doing here?" he asked as he pushed the hallway out of his way.
The 3-D Pittsburgh scenery film vanished, and the walls of the halls began to fall like dominoes.
Before the walls got to President Tareff (still amazed at the changing carpet color), an elevator popped up from the floor and opened. There was Cuijj. "I found this elevator. Get in before the walls squish you."
In a flash, Gary darted into the elevator. The doors closed and Cuijj said, while putting on an elevator operator's hat, "Going up!" He pushed the UP button. The elevator ascended just as the hall wall collapsed on another.
"Right in the nick of time," smiled the architect.
President Tareff began to think logically again. "Why are we going up, Cuijj? Aren't we on our way down to get out of this place."
Cuijj's logic was a bit deviated. "You want to be down and out? I'd rather be up and in."
"Your creation has made you mad," stated Tareff.
DING! The elevator doors opened and exposed the lobby of Intricate International. Qrovl and Binln were playing double solitaire at the receptionist's desk. All President Gary Tareff could think of was joy.
"Alas, the exit is near!" He stumbled into the lobby.
The elevator doors closed. "Cuijj!" he yelled as the master architect stayed inside. Fidgety, the president pushed all of the elevator buttons.
"Are we going now?" asked Binln getting up.
"We can't forget Cuijj."
"The master architect?" Qrovl asked.
Gary nodded.
"He's in the Mixistrixin Room," Binln stated. "Remember we were supposed to meet him there?"
The president temporarily placed himself in the state of confusion against his will. His intelligence had to dig himself out of that state. Why would Cuijj be back in the Mixistrixin Room? Why have his bodyguards insouciantly returned?
As he contemplated those questions, his hand brushed against the walkie-talkie clutched on the rim of his pants. Bringing it up to his mouth, Gary Tareff pushed the button and spoke, "President Tareff to Cuijj. Are you their, Cuijj?"
Static. Then an answer surprising Gary. "This is Cuijj. I am ready to start the Presidential tour. Come up to the Mixistrixin Room when you're ready."
Static. Has everything started over again? If so, an adventure of bafflement should not be repeated. "I'll have to cancel today's tour, Cuijj. I just remembered other business that I must attend to. President Tareff over and out."
He turned to his bodyguard. "Let's get out of here." The two escorts got up and stood at Tareff's sides.
They opened the exit and proceeded into the Mixistrixin Room.
"Didn't you cancel the tour?" Cuijj asked confused as the other three.
Gary responded, "I did, and we left."
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