Mike eventually arrived at a pair of overly wide doors with two faded signs above them. The right sign labeled 'exit' had been left alone, but the ‘pull’ sign beside it had been marked out with a red x. He pushed through the center of the doors, and the left swung open wildly while the right caught roughly and scraped along the floor. Both doors are broken but each in their own uniquely annoying way.

“Hey, watch it buddy!” Shouted a woman who was standing behind the door that caught.

“Sorry about that...” Another woman apologized for Mike. She had been behind the door that flung open as if the laws of physics were merely a suggestion. She was picking herself up off the ground and patting the dust off herself, embarrassed to have been any part of a potential conflict.

Mike wasn’t sure what to say, he wanted to yell at one for being mad when she shouldn’t, yell at the other for not being mad when she should, and apologize to both at the same time. What he ended up doing was nod at the two women, say, “thanks” and then continue on his way. As Mike walked off the first woman shouted that he was a jerk, the second said he was welcome.

Just because Mike was out of the tunnels didn’t mean everything around him suddenly made sense. The squat doors had opened up to an irresponsibly massive lobby with high arched ceilings that threw off his sense of scale. The great room was only a mini-chamber, a sub-superstructure that was itself one of many buildings inside of an even more unreasonably sized all-encompassing megastructure.

The mountainous building came from a time when companies built offices like temples. A ridiculous time when the larger the obstacle of construction, the more outrageous the cost, the higher they praised their company. Most reactions to seeing the building today were centered around wondering why or how it existed, with a small minority too stunned with a sudden realization of how small they were in the universe to even consider anything else.

Mike made his way through the lobby and into the general employee lounge area. He passed a cell phone store that he swore went out of business years ago. To Mike’s utter horror, the man at the kiosk waved in his direction. Why is he… who is he? Do I wave back? Thankfully Mike looked behind himself and saw another man returning the kiosk man’s wave. I’m in the middle of a wave sandwich. This is uncomfortable.

Social anxiety detected. Would you like for me to keep you company?

Sure. Mike suppressed his immediate reaction to silence the voice. Having someone to talk to, even if it was his annoying biochip, was better than nothing right now.

Would you like to talk about your childhood trauma or perhaps your failed romantic relationships?

Mike tried to find absolutely anything to talk about besides what the chip came up with. He passed a barbershop and figured that was good enough. Why do we even have barbershops anymore? Shouldn’t you be able to take care of peoples hair?

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While I have the capability, many of my biological capabilities were deemed unethical or illegal, and I am restricted from performing those functions.

Big Hair lobbyists got to ya, eh? Couldn’t have you cutting them out of the picture?

There was a noticeable pause.

Resuming passive mode.

Mike passed two competing cafeterias and a convenience store for all those forgettable necessities from the far off outside world. He weaved his way through a gaggle of employees who wore every type of clothes except work casual. They littered the halls, entrances, and anywhere with enough standing room and some places without. Mike smelled food, trash, people, and a thousand others all mixed and crammed together. He’d missed the smells in the tunnels; at least he’d only had to deal with a few then.

Personally owned radios and screens were strapped or bolted wherever there was space. The videos and music mixed together so no one could hear much of either, but maybe that was the point. Every ten feet or so Mike passed a stuffed recycling bin that people somehow kept finding a way to balance more on top of. Each one will be emptied tonight and refilled tomorrow. The waste disposal robots were by far the hardest workers around.

Mike had been through this way enough times to see the patterns. He recognized that the people who floated around and filled up space changed, but where they clumped and clustered up stayed the same.

Near the old cafeteria was a tight-knit group of soon-to-be retirees. Their repetitive conversations usually revolved around their careful research on how to get the most out of a pension. Every so often the oldest in the group would phase out and one of the older employees from another circle would filter in when their old friends stopped wanting to hear about their IRA.

The barber shop had a group of retirees who swore that slowing down meant dying. They mostly complained about anything that’s changed. When I was a kid they yelled at me to get off the lawn, now they act like their world is ending because kids stopped going outside.

The group in the middle of the walk way, and the largest by far, was the unplaceables: employees that the company had but didn't want, wanted but didn't need, or needed but forgot they had. Mike stumbled through a group yoga session, a learning group whose current obsession was hula hoops, and one guy telling anyone who would listen about his trip to Brazil.

In the middle of it all was a single young woman who stood rock still as the tide of people moved around her. She was strikingly professional, impeccably dressed, and deeply confused. Without thinking Mike found himself standing in front of her, the press of people flowing around him now too. Oh no, this is the tunnel picture all over again…

The disturbingly sharp and professional woman looked Mike up and down, who had now been standing there too long to awkwardly walk away. Anyone less steadfast, confident, or low on options would have hesitated at talking to Mike. Maybe they’d have stared at the spiderwebs still in his hair, dirt and cuts in his shirt, or the burn mark he wasn’t aware he had where his toolbelt used to be. She did not. Instead she demanded, “Who do you report to?”

Mike pointed to a tall and thin man standing next to a portly woman who was cooking on an extra electric grill.

“They're in charge?” The man's shirt said ‘don't kiss the cook, he bites’ with accented red stains running down the front.

“No, they’re not,” Mike said as the woman's power over him broke and he walked away. The man and woman at the grill weren’t in charge, but they were in the area newcomers seemed to gravitate towards.

Mike didn't know what series of unfortunate events had landed the woman here, but he did know one thing that she herself was just now starting to understand. The woman's career was over.