Seth’s story

Through a heavy fireproofed door he activated an electronic device and pushed hard against smooth steel. A tall, handsome young man with green eyes, black dishevelled hair and round reading glasses works his way past the photocopier on the right hand side. This was the right hand side of a thick glass wall which shielded ten meeting rooms and opposed a row of light shining in through a long window above a red brick façade. Seth Smalling sits himself in the centre of an open plan office, with low ceilings and square light panels, and was surrounded by stationery, paper files and a dusty- lopped sided screen suspended from the back.

His partitioned work station surrounded a hive of ringing phones, touch-typing as well as screwed up documents thrown into strong, cardboard-cut, green receptacles. Most of his days were spent set-ting up systems for, the scheduled appointments of, electrical maintenance operatives who worked throughout the vast estate of buildings owned by Grandoaks Auxiliary. The lights in the ceiling would dazzle his pearly green eyes having reflected off his lenses. At the end of each day, a blur of suits, suit trousers and knee length skirts would race around his mind with endless square patterns and phones which had ceased to sound and vibrate. However this was a job he enjoyed, and he was in the tenth year there as a man in his mid-thirties.

‘Seth, I’m glad to say that I would like to offer you a company bonus, based on your hard work of the last year’, Seth’s boss says, in a congratulatory tone. He was on the other side of his desk in the first glass meeting room. He was a medium height man, early 60’s, with curly blonde hair and glasses with slim lenses. Seth’s satisfaction, on this particular Friday afternoon, gave him inner warmth that contrasted the squally winter weather outside. Whilst he was informed of this, rain droplets slowly-slid down the shiny glass curtain, whilst the tops of trees could be seen to shake in the blue-grey horizon. Seth finished the day as normal, and tidied his slightly disordered curved desk.

He was to finish the day and be satisfied over the restful weekend, and headed through the dividing path between the rows of desks towards the glass rooms. Past a small door, that wasn’t full size but not a mere cupboard he headed out with his rucksack and winter coat. A light shone around the door frame which flickered slightly, so he suddenly stopped and decided to take a brief look to keep up his record of good housekeeping.

‘See you Monday Seth!’ exclaimed a junior member of staff as he jogged past, ‘I need to rush; the weather won’t help the roads at this time!’

‘Ok Rick!’ replied Seth cheerfully, ’I’ll not be long myself, I just need to check something.’

He approached the door, he had previously noticed, and entered it. The door led to a fairly large, and darkish, room with a photocopier that lit up most of the corner it resided in. This puzzled Seth, as it was a room he strangely had never been in. At the other end of the room, which must have been 30 metres in length, there was another rather innocuous doorway. The door which Seth walked through was closed behind him as he looked to see where the light switches were. He couldn’t find them.

Seth approached the photocopier, which was flashing light from the top. When he arrived to unplug it from the wall, he looked at the electronic screen command bar. It read “CONTACT SENENONS DIS-ORDER”.

The photocopier unplugged itself from the wall. Red and white light flashed from the copying screen on top. Seth sprinted towards the door he entered from, but could not open it. He then sprinted to-wards the far end whilst the noisy, box unit chased him down the room making a variety of malfunctioned – machine like sounds as the copying screen flapped against the main computer. Seth, terrified, tried to open the door having reached it, but the photocopier was closing in, roughly five metres away. He barely managed to open the door and, reach the other side, before the mad-white engine crashed against him almost crushing his slender left hand.

A sigh of relief, mixed with pure terror. Seth had entered the desert of the Earthbound Realm. He now remembers a pure white light.