Atemporals [Part One]

OG prompt by u/Chaos_Spear

[WP] You're in an elevator, and as the doors close, a man in the front turns around and says, "So, I bet you're wondering why I've gathered you all here today." You start to laugh a second before you realize that everyone is giving you a very serious, slightly puzzled look.

---

Despite myself, I doubled down.

"This is some joke right? Where are the hidden cameras?"

I chuckled a bit, making a show of checking the corners. No wires. No lenses. Maybe they had a high enough budget for those button-sized body cams?

There were six other folks in the elevator--three of which were standing motionless, as if paused in time. The other three were staring daggers at me, including the man who'd first spoken the words: So, I bet you're wondering why I've gathered you all here today.

The man with the briefcase tilted his head.

"Positively fascinating. Crick, he can see us?"

"It appears so. Kinetic Suspension's still pulsating."

A raven haired woman moved to the elevator panel. She put her watch up to the screen. Mechanical noises reverberated through our little cabin, the sounds of shifting gears. The panel flipped over and the raven haired woman went to town on an illuminated keyboard.

"Alright, seriously, I have a meet--"

A portly man in a checkered suit slapped me. Clear across the cheek.

"What the fuck!"

"Cognition's not the slightest impaired," he whispered. His pudgy fingers pinched my cheeks hard till I slapped them away. He smiled at his hand, giggling to himself.

"All temporal inhibitor's are online," said raven hair. She squinted at the screen. "There's...there's no explanation."

She looked at me as if I were a case study.

"A fucking atemporal," checker suit said, shaking his head. "What are the chances?"

"F'christsakes," sighed the man with the briefcase. He turned his gaze to mine. Something behind those eyes told me he was not to be fucked with.

"How long have you seen the Threads?" he asked.

"What the hell are you all on about?"

Just then the elevator cabin shook violently. A terrible creaking sound rang in my ears.

"Sir, we're already pushing the limits of suspension here! We need to wrap this up!"

Briefcase man grabbed me by the collar. He looked me dead in the eyes, like he were trying to look through me. He was so close I could smell his aftershave.

"Albert," he whispered. "That can't be you?"

"I-I've had enough. Get Ashton Kutch--"

"Einstein's transmigration faded years ago skip," said checkered suit.

Another violent shake. The poor stiff sods beside me teetered like bowling pins on the brink of toppling.

"Sir!"

Raven hair was on the verge of panic. Briefcase man released me. I crumpled into a heap in the corner. He nodded to raven hair and the elevator doors chimed open.

My mouth dropped as I processed the view:

The main floor of the Keane office building was pulsating in an aurora borealis. Beautiful streams of color drifted through the air, connecting everything. Office staff were frozen in place, bands of green and blue passed through them as if they weren't even there.

Through the windows, I saw Malcolm Street as if I were looking through a viewfinder. Cabs were being hailed by motionless raised hands. A homeless man panhandled, stiff as a corpse. Everything shrouded in a thread of gorgeous aqua hue.

As the briefcase man and his companions trotted through the open door, something snapped. Movement resumed. Office personnel click clacked across the marble floor, and outside the cabs began bleating.

Inside the elevator, the stiff sods were no longer stiff. They frowned down at me as I twitched in the corner.

Something in me had snapped too, like an overexerted muscle. My mind was a whirlwind, a muddy roiling mess. The thoughts in my head tumbled around, crashing in on themselves.

"Sir. What of the uninitiated?" I heard the raven haired lady ask.

"Nick, get him up," Briefcase said. "Tomorrow we initiate."

His words were fluttering letters in a brisk wind, but I managed to grasp them. I clung to them, analyzed them as checkered suit looped his arms through mine muttering apologies to the bystanders. Even in all my confusion, I could feel something deep and subliminal had just been set in motion, if only by the steady sound of my heartbeat in my ears.

---

Part 2