My eyes slowly adapt to the luminosity. I am in a church-like building, lying down on an altar. The light coming out of the stained glass windows is directed directly at me. I stand up and see a marble pool in front of me. A stone bridge leads to the exit door. I leave the building and realize that I am back on the first floor, outside on the southern side.
I’ve never seen the building we live in from that angle; I realize that a large column is emerging from its top and is rising to the sky. I wonder what it is. I head back to the station. There are many people in the cafeteria (it must be lunchtime).
Even though I’m not hungry, the past three days have been lonely. I grab a bunch of fruits, find my friends and sit with them. I hear a familiar voice: “What the fuck Joshua.” That is Jack. The others exclaim themselves: there is Markus, Tao, and Lilly. That is the group I did hang out with the most in college. “Dude, you were gone for three days! You could’ve least answered our messages,” complains Markus. I explain that I wasn’t able to answer. “Come to think of it, your status message stated: unreachable, which is weird,” comments Lilly. Tao does not say a word but flips me while making firm eye contact.
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“So what happened ?” asks Jack. I start to describe the adventure I had, but I am interrupted by a fight starting on the other side of the room. Plates break, and two guys jump at each other throats. Rapidly the automatons intervene and separate the two. They are then escorted outside. “Right into jail, mother******s,” comments Tao. I ask what happened, and Jack explains. There has been a lute for power while I was gone. A group of people (primarily former association members and popular peoples) decided to take the lead after a not very fair election. Their goal is to find a way to come back home, and they call themselves “The Bureau”. The problem is that they’ve been kind of bossy and that some did not take that well. Also, there has been some tension due to a girl disappearing. Rumors say that she vanished into a burst of light after playing with her pain limiter. “Well, about that…” I resume explaining everything to them.
At first, they do not believe me, but they agree that parts of my story make sense. “You should come to The Bureau’s conference this afternoon. They will present the information they gathered already,” says Lilly. I agree to attend the conference since I might be interested in what they have to say. I hang out a little more with my friends, and we wait until the meeting.