The waking part
Greenie woke beneath a lamp that swung even though there was no wind. The floor was cold. The walls were the color of a thought you lose just before you can name it. He stood, waited for a memory to arrive, and received absolutely nothing.
Ahead of him rose ten floors of numbered doors. One hundred in total. No stairs leading away, no windows, no helpful reception desk. Door 037 appeared to be breathing. Greenie decided that was a problem for Future Greenie, a person he already disliked burdening.
Then he found the handprint beside Door 001. Lime green. Four little fingers. Exactly his size. Dust had settled around it for years, but not on it. His hand fitted perfectly.
“I think I have been here before.” — Greenie, after thinking for an impressively long time
The first room did not ask who he was. It turned off the lights and waited. In the dark, old marks appeared on the wall—marks Greenie somehow knew how to read. When he solved them, the room gave him a symbol and a memory so small it was almost only a feeling.
That is how the building works. It does not explain. It remembers at him. Every room keeps some misplaced piece of his life: a sentence hidden in a mirror, a route his feet recognize, a drawer his hands open before his mind understands why.










