Tower of New Life
This is a short story I wrote for Humanities.
Once there was a tower, it was called The Tower of New Life. It was an interesting looking tower. The walls curved outward. As if bubbles had been stacked on top of each other and they got squeezed together so that in between the bubbles there was a floor. The building had five floors. There were windows on every floor in the middle of the wall. The very top of the building, was green. And the fourth bubble was orange.
In this building nobody but the people that work in there know what is going on. It’s not an old run down building like the ones around it, it looks almost brand new. The people that come out, are not friends with anybody. The people that come out do not live anywhere near this building. The people that come out are not recognizable to anyone.
One man noticed this building and the peculiar business going on around it. His name was Parker Davis. At the time he discovered the building he was a Private Eye, and he sometimes worked with a man named Guy Noir who was also a Private Eye.
Parker discovered the building when he drove past it one day. It is in an odd place for a building like that. It was right in the middle of a very poor residential neighborhood. But this building was a tall business building. It was always very clean and nice.
At the time Parker discovered the building he was on his way to meet a client so he decided to look into it later. He took different route home and totally forgot about the building until it came up in a discussion he was having with Guy. They decided to go check it out later. To the surprise of both Guy and Parker they did not forget about the building and went to go see it the next day.
They drove over together from Guy’s apartment. When they arrived Parker got out of the car and walked up to the front door of the building. On the door it said: Hours from when you want to be here to when you don’t. Parker went inside. He opened the door a cool breeze blew in his face, similar to the one you feel when you walk into a fast food restaurant. He could feel how much less movement there was inside. Guy came in behind him.
The room was all white. White couch, white walls, white plant pots, white desk and even the person at the front desk was wearing all white. The person was a young woman she had pale skin to match all of the white around her. Parker walked over to her as Guy sat on the couch and just looked around.
“Hello” Parker said
“Hello”
The woman at her desk did not look up from her white computer when she was talking. Parker hesitated for a moment and listened to the clicking of the woman’s keyboard.
“How may I help you?” She asked
“I’m not sure, that is why I’m here.” Parker replied, “I have seen this building many times before and I always wanted to know what happens in here.”
“Information is on the second floor.”
She spoke quickly and without emotion.
“C’mon Guy let’s head up to the next floor.”
“One at a time please.”
“Oh.”
He hesitated for a moment.
“All right.”
“Thank you.”
She didn’t respond, she just kept typing as if Parker and Guy had never even come in.
Parker walked over towards the elevators. He pressed the white button and then he entered the completely black elevator. He walked in the elevator and the door closed behind him. It was completely dark. Until two little lights came on just like in all elevators. There was four buttons arranged in a square. All of these buttons were white, on each button there was a number 1, 2, 3, and 4. But only the button with a 2 on it was lit. Above those buttons in a glass case was a red button that had a big black 5 on it. It was lit as well.
Parker pressed the second button. He felt the slow climb to the second floor begin. He thought that this would be on of those slow elevators that make you want to take the stairs even if you have to go up eight floors, but after no more than a second or two of waiting the door opened and he stepped out of the elevator.
This room, like the last, was all white. This time there was nothing but a small couch pushed up against the far wall. After a moment of looking around he saw a door, right next to the couch. He started towards the door when he heard a voice.
“Please proceed through the door.”
Parker hesitated, slightly startled by the voice. It was clearly a woman but it sounded robotic.
“Please proceed through the door.”
Parker started for the door again. As he grew closer to the door Parker noticed that there was no doorknob. He did not know what to do. Just as he started to think about what he should do the door opened by itself. The next room was all dark except for a light that was shining on a chair that looked like it was in the middle of the room but it was hard to tell because the rest of the room was dark. Parker couldn’t think of anything else to do but sit in the chair. He walked to the chair and then, sat in it. The voice came back, it said Parker’s name.
“Parker Davis?”
He hesitated for a moment.
“Erm, yes?”
“Please prepare for measurement.”
He was confused. He looked up and saw something beginning to come down towards him. He tried to get up but he couldn’t. He looked down but there was nothing holding him to the chair, but he simply could not stand up. Just after he started to wonder about why he couldn’t get up, a dome lowered over his head. The dome made him feel calm, and relaxed. He saw colors. Red slowly faded to orange, to yellow, to green, to blue, and so on. Everything was all the sudden better. He was calm and happy. He felt happy but he knew that this was an artificial happy.
“Measurement complete.”
The dome did not go up as he expected. It stayed down. But the colors went away. The dome was now all black.
“Prepare to receive.”
Parker was confused what was he about to receive? He felt a rush forward, he saw blurs of things that he could not make out, his stomach jumped. The dome raised and he had forgotten why he was in this building. He had a headache. Next he found the elevator and went back down to the first floor. He saw Guy and then Guy asked him what had happened.
“What happened? You were up there for at least an hour.”
“I don’t know, what are we doing here?”
“You were figuring out what this building is!”
“Why? I know exactly what this building is for.”
Parker didn’t realize that he learned what the building was made for just minuets ago. Then Parker remembered why he was here and he realized that the dome told him what the building was for and how it got here. That is what he received. He told Guy that he should go upstairs and see the next floor.
Guy went to the next floor and about an hour later he came back down confused but with new knowledge. Knowledge about the building.
Part II
“The receiving process is very interesting. It makes absolutely sure that you have learned whatever it is the dome is teaching you. It doesn’t accelerate the learning process. You may have noticed that both of you were in the learning room for at least an hour. But what it does is make sure that you can not focus on anything else. This way time seems to go by very quickly. If you don’t notice anything but what you are learning you have no sense of time. It can leave you with a headache too.”
After learning about the building and going to the second floor. Parker and Guy had found a staircase as they were leaving the building and decided to go down it. At the bottom of the stairs there was another room similar to the first floor. There was a woman down there, she was typing at a computer just like the woman on the first floor which made Parker wonder where she went. She wasn’t there went he came back from the second floor. But there was something about this woman that was different, she was wearing blue.
“Are either of you two interested in becoming new people today?”
This question would sound weird to a person listening out of context but Parker and Guy new exactly what she was talking about. She was talking about what the rest of the tower does. After the first floor which is a lobby you can go to the second floor. The basement, which they were in, was were you can talk to someone about the tower. You can only use the elevator in the lobby to go up a floor. The elevator only lets you go to the next floor after you have completed the last floor. Every floor does something different and they all have names. The first floor is The Lobby, the second is The Receiver, the third is The Identifier, The fourth is The Mutation, and the fifth is known as The Changer. On the second floor you learn what the building does via a receiving dome. The third floor makes sure that you are who you say you are by doing a fingerprint test, an information about you test, and basically every kind of test that could help someone know who you are. The fourth floor allows you to make small changes in your appearance such as eye color or hair color. But it cannot change your gender or change your favorite things, you would have to go too deep into the brain for that. The fifth floor contains a very high tech piece of machinery that changes who you are. You will still look the same as you did after the fourth floor, but nobody will recognize you as who you were but as a new random person. All of the records of your existence will be changed to your new person. You will not remember being your old self, but you will have fake memories and if you return to where you lived nobody will recognize you. But you would not know that you used to live there and your old family and neighbors will not remember you. The only people that will remember you are your new family that you have actually never seen before but you can remember them and they will recognize you as well. Your old neighbors and family will have you erased from their memories. And you will have a special device implanted in you so as soon as you see your new family the device will make them remember you and your fake memories.
The process of going through the tower takes about a week. And the family you go to will not be random. Another person similar to you will switch lives with you. But you will not become them nor they you but a new person that would fit with your new family. The person you switch with has to be similar to you in what role they play in a family. If you are a dad you would switch with another dad. If you need to wait for another person to switch with you then you will be placed in a sleep chamber before you reach the fifth floor. There are a few side effects of this process. You may have flashbacks of your old family, you will have an extremely good memory, Your old family may remember you subconsciously and become very depressed for no apparent reason, and you may become insane.
Guy and Parker realized that this building could ruin lots of people’s lives. But they knew that they had lots of time because nobody else would learn about these buildings like they did, and expose them before Parker and Guy had a chance to do anything. This could be their chance to become national heros!
They went about their business planing what they should do without taking any other cases and not telling anybody. They planed for a long time. They wrote speeches and gathered evidence on the building for about three months.
One night Parker and Guy were staying up late into the night working on their speeches and preparing evidence in Guy’s apartment. They heard a door being knocked down and then people screaming. Then their door was knocked down and hundreds of little alien like cats ran through the door and past Parker and Guy. In the doorway there was a tall sturdy figure to big to be a human. It stepped into their apartment and began to demand them to come with him. His voice was very smooth sounding but it also sounded robotic.
Better Part III
Next week Parker and Guy decided they would go their local news station and tell them about their discovery. Parker walked into the building and told the receptionist that he had a story they would be interested in. She sent a reporter to talk to him in room 15B.
“You can meet her in 15B, That is on the 15th floor second door on the left.
“Thank you.”
She was a young woman her name was Sarah Faulk. They told them all about what they learned. After about an hour the reporter that they talked to asked them to take her to the building. When they arrived Parker pointed at the building and told the reporter to look at it.
“Look! Isn’t is amazing?”
“What?”
Parker took off his sunglasses and looked at the building again. It was gone. He realized that his sunglasses were what helped him see the building. Now that he remembered he found them and the ones Guy was wearing, in a garbage can outside his apartment.
The reporter thought he was crazy and asked to try on his glasses. As soon as she put them on she saw the building. She was amazed and thought that this would be the start of her career in journalism.
She thanked them for telling her about the tower and drove back to the news station. She told her boss about the tower but he didn’t believe her. Everyone she told thought she was crazy.
Sarah went to Parkers apartment to talk to him more about the building and what is does. Parker told her exactly what happened from when he discovered the building, to the function of every floor. She couldn’t help wanting to go to the tower. But it wasn’t just her curiosity anymore. She had been drugged.
Parker offered to let her stay for the night.
“You are more than welcome to stay here for the night.”
“Oh, thank you, yes, that would be great.”
She spoke slowly because she wasn’t thinking about actually staying in Parker’s apartment. She wanted his sunglasses so she could go back to the tower. As soon as Parker fell asleep, Sarah took his glasses and was out the door. She drove as fast as she could to the tower, when she got there, she walked inside and asked about becoming a new person. The woman behind the desk, still wearing all white, said it would cost her eight thousand dollars. Sarah at first was a little bit hesitant to hand over all that money. But she decided to go ahead and pay because, she had been drugged to do so.
Parker woke up the next morning and realized that his sunglasses were gone. He had expected them to be gone. He didn’t worry though because he knew every time he lost them, a new pair would appear on top of the trash can outside his apartment building.
Parker did this because he was getting paid a large sum of money to do so. The first time he was in the tower, just as he was leaving the woman at the front desk told him that if he would like they have a job opening. He was interested so he asked her what kind of job it was.
“Mr Davis!”
“Before you leave I wanted to let you know that we have a job opening.”
“Really? You think I would be good for a job? What does it involve?”
“You bring customers here with these pills and I will give you a thousand dollars for every person that comes.”
Parker’s Private Eye business hadn’t been working out too well lately so he said yes. The woman behind the desk asked him for his email, then said she would sent him the details.
Parker went to a restaurant to ask for a job as a waiter were he could easily put the drugs in people’s food too help him get more people to go to the building. After a year though, he sat down and thought about what he was doing. But when he really thought about what he was doing he decided that he couldn’t do it anymore. He could ruin people’s lives. The worst part was that he couldn’t tell anyone about his job either. He was much better off now, he had a house in a nice neighborhood and he had a fiance, and a dog too. The only thing stopping him from quitting was that he wouldn’t have another source of income. So when he was offered a job at the local police station he finally quit. He then started planning on exposing the tower to get it shut down.
He left his job at the tower without telling anyone. The tower always knew what was going on in Parker’s head. It knew he wanted to shut it down. So one morning Parker went to find his glasses and he couldn’t find them anywhere.
Parker realized that his glasses were gone, but he didn’t worry, he would never need them again.
