Pt 26: The Spire

Friday June 10th, 2016
8:27 am (6 5/8 hours of sleep)

Jutting like a spear tip aimed toward the heavens, the Bureaucratic Spire loomed ahead waiting for me. I was late for my appointment with this realities grounds keeper. I had a matter of universal security to discuss with her. At least that was the story that got me the appointment.

Built with granite and marble, the inside of The Spire was depressingly similar to many of the Universal Management & Maintenance buildings I had seen and subsequently destroyed. It turns out most alternate universes were, but for slight differences, the exact same. While yet others were completely and frighteningly different. It would seem the universe that housed The Spire was one of the "normal" universes. I would have no remorse for the destruction of this reality.

The grounds keeper's personal assistant met me in the lobby and with no more than a cursory glance to my person proceeded to escort me further up and in to that bureaucratic nightmare. Short cubicles crammed in to tight office spaces with workers sitting shoulder to shoulder drudging along in their near slave labor of filing and stamping.

After a few floors and more depressed people than I ever care to see, the Personal Assistant left me standing outside an unassuming door marked with nothing more than the interdimensional symbol for custodial and maintenance of the universe. After less than an hour but more than twenty minutes, the door swung open and a voice like a mouse ushered me forth.

The High Custodian Mistress Ballia Turonga, as was her full title, sat behind a panel inset to her desk. The panel looked remarkably similar to the one I had interacted with on my first adventure in the back rooms of reality so many universes ago. It had all manners of buttons, levers, lights, and other pieces of mechanical instrumentation and was going about its merry way with just some guidance from The Mistress.

She sat there, an eye of disapproving appraisal cast over me as she asked me the nature of the emergency that brought me forth. Not very many people were supposed to know of the Ministry of Universal Management & Maintenance. My reply came, as I took a small step with each word. Having heard my concocted impending disaster and found it lacking, she shook her head and lightly pressed a button labeled 'security'.

I knew I didn't have much time. Shooting forward and shoving Mistress Turonga over, I looked for that unlabeled lever. Though I had found in many other realities with many other panels that the color changed, there was always an unlabeled lever which would spell certain doom for whichever reality housed it. With searching eyes I finally came across it, the color of forest green. Putting my entire bodily weight into the switching of that lever, a familiar light changed the colors of the room and that cacophonous roar upon rising up, put a smile on my lips. As emotions drained from the room, the Mistress screamed at me, the sounds of which never reached my ears. I let out a hearty laugh as the universe collapsed around me. I was one step closer to home.