The Not-Particularly-Excellent Adventures of the Keanu-Spawn

Written by Anakin McFly

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PROLOGUE – Taken

EPILOGUE

1st April 2004
The Real World

The doorbell rang in Room 439 of Kenselton Hotel.

"Keith?"

Two loud thumps on the door.

"Keith, you there?"

Another ring of the doorbell sounded through the deserted room. A mild curse, a final thump on the door, and then a gradual fading of footsteps padding away down the corridor.

Rooms 436 and 437 were empty. They weren't supposed to have been empty, thought Adwin Fong, as he headed towards the last place his brother was likely to be.

The light in the control room was on, spilling through the gap under its door.

There you are, Adwin thought, and picked up his pace. He reached the door, swung it open, and let himself in amongst the computers and machine blocks. "Did you kn-" he started, but his words caught at the sight of an old man sitting on Keith's desk and gazing serenely at him.

"Hello there!" the old man said with a sudden cheery smile. "What brings you here, brother of Keith?"

Adwin blinked. "...Who are you? Where's Keith

The cheery smile didn't fade. "Keith? Oh, he's dead."

Adwin's mouth fell open.

"As for me," the visitor continued without missing a beat, "you can call m-"

"What?" Adwin interrupted. "What… dead? What… what d'you mean… how did… when…"

"When? Oh, about twenty-five years ago," the old man said pleasantly. "As I was saying, you can call me Dem. D-E-M. Some people call me the Mysterious Old Man, but personally I find that a little tedious to say."

Adwin realised that his mouth was still open, and saw no reason to close it.

"Anyway," Dem said, springing lightly to his feet, "back to business now. The machine is still-"

"But…"

"I would prefer if you do not interrupt, Adwin. I don't like that very much. Where was I? Oh yes. The machine is still in full working order. I believe there was a slight problem with dimensional incompatibility manifesting itself after several days, but as you know, the subjects weren't in this world long enough to experience that. No matter, anyhow. We can always fix that with the new machine."

"The new-"

"I said, don't interrupt. With the new machine, there won't be any more fiddly little problems with dimensional incompatibility. You'll be able to use the machine as it was meant to be used – large-scale inter-dimensional transportation. Of course, we don't need to do anything dangerous. No dinosaurs and things like that. Let's keep it simple, and keep to what we know works: fictional characters."

"What?"

"They're human, most of them, which means that they will be easy to control. They won't cause much of a disruption to normal life on this planet of yours. Consider the facts for a moment, Adwin. The book and movie industry make billions of dollars a year. Take Harry Potter, for example. You know the size of the crowds that gather outside bookshops hours before a new book is released? They're huge. Huge crowds of rabid, enthusiastic fans desperate to know what happens next in the adventures of Harry and friends."

"Yeah, but what's that got-"

Dem sighed. "How many times do I have to tell you to shut up? Now, how much do you think those fans would pay to meet Harry and friends? Not the actors, but the actual characters, straight out of the books, fresh from Hogwarts, in all their magical glory?"

Adwin decided that Dem probably didn't want answers to his rhetorical questions.

"Ever wanted to be rich, Adwin?" Dem asked with a smile filled with generosity and benevolence and just the slightest hint of a hidden agenda. "Ever wanted to be powerful?"

And Adwin decided that, yes, that sounded pretty good to him.

The new Kenselton Hotel was built by hands not of this world. They came via the machine, all of them, hundreds of skilled workers whose only aim in life was to build the facility. Engineers, architects, crane-drivers, builders. They were efficient, they were fast, they did their work well, and they asked no questions.
Kenselton Hotel stands not on land. It hangs in a void outside the space-time continuum, in an isolated bubble of hyperspace with nothing above and nothing below. Teleportation is the only way in, and the only way out. Or so they claim. No one was really paying attention when the architect pointed out how regulations required all buildings to have fire exits, even though that is exactly the kind of thing that you should really pay attention to when planning a maximum security hotel.
The hotel itself is staffed by beings from other universes, each one perfectly suited for their job, each one working for free, each one needing no sustenance such as food or water. Security guards, receptionists, cooks -– the members of each type are identical in body and mind. It contributes to the organisation of the facility. Organisation is of utmost importance. It's neater that way.
On the day when Kenselton Hotel goes into operation, there are ten residential blocks, each with too many floors and stemming from a central area that holds a library, gaming arcade, cafeteria, hospital, bar and sports facilities, among others. The construction workers are always building new blocks. The space is needed. The multiverse is infinite.
Their method of categorising and labelling the residents was stolen straight off the Internet Movie Database, but they figured that no one would notice anyway.
There are no windows anywhere.
And even if there were windows, there would be nothing to see.

Two months before The Matrix Reloaded
Inside the Matrix

The slightest glint of suspicion flickered on the Architect's face. "You're early."

"I need to be."

The Architect took some time to ponder this reply.

"Your behaviour these past few months has been interesting, Neo," he said. "You seem to have suddenly obtained an ability to avoid danger, even in cases when such danger should have been unavoidable. It is almost as if you know beforehand what is going to happen. It is almost as if you know the future."

Neo remained silent, trying not to think too much about the screenplays for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions stashed away in his cabin on the Nebuchadnezzar.

"The One has many powers," the Architect continued. "Some degree of precognition among them. But never to this extent. Even the Oracle cannot see what lies ahead with such clarity."

"Maybe I just get lucky," Neo said.

The Architect arched a white eyebrow at him.

"Let's say I can predict the future," Neo said. "I know what I'm supposed to be here for. I know that you were going to tell me that this is the sixth cycle of the Matrix, and that I'm the sixth anomaly. I know that I have to make a choice. My predecessors all chose to go through that door to the Source, which would result in the destruction of Zion and its eventual rebuilding. The Matrix will restart itself all over again, and the cycle will repeat itself. Am I right so far?"

The Architect sat back in his chair. "Yes. Continue."

"But I also know that the program Smith has gone out of control. If he is not stopped, he will spread like a virus throughout the Matrix, leading to the eventual downfall of the system. And you wouldn't want that to happen."

"Interesting," the Architect commented after short hesitation. "Very interesting."

Neo opened his mouth to continue, when a wave of nausea made him close his mouth again. He swallowed; but a familiar tingling sensation had started making its way up his limbs.

Oh no, Neo thought as he recognised the experience of inter-dimensional travel. Not again.

Then in a sudden explosion of feeling, the tingling turned into a searing pain that shot through him; ripping his mind out of the Matrix and his body out of his universe into blackness, forcing him through a temporary inter-universe void filled with nothing but the scream echoing in his mind.

Several universes away, a young teenager named Ted Logan jolted out of his sleep. He stared unblinking into the darkness of his room, his pulse racing. There was something familiar about the sudden mental intrusion he had felt. A connection he had not sensed since…

"Neo?" he whispered, but nobody heard him.

And then he too was grabbed out of his world.

The Not-Particularly-Excellent
Adventures of the Keanu-Spawn

"Reality is the #1 cause of insanity among those who are in contact with it."
– Anonymous

Kenselton Hotel
The Real World

Light.

Warm light, coming from somewhere above him, reflecting dully off the smooth floor.

Lying on his side, his gaze idly traced the line where the wall met the floor before his consciousness fully returned and it occurred to him that he had better get up; and his hands moved to push him into a sitting position that allowed Neo to get a fuller view of where he had landed.

He was in a small rectangular room, about two-and-a-half by two metres in size. Soft elevator music played from hidden speakers. The room was bare; or at least it almost was, for in front of him on the wooden door was stuck a laminated paper notice.

Something scratched against his left wrist and he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a plastic tag looped around it. On the tag was a barcode and serial number: 206/999/AND.

Neo suddenly had a bad feeling about this. He pulled his sleeve back down and got to his feet to read the notice on the door.

'WELCOME TO KENSELTON HOTEL,' the heading read. And above it to its right: 'BLK-F/ENG/6'
'Congratulations,' the main message started. 'You have been deemed significant enough to be brought into this universe, hereafter referred to as the real world. Before proceeding any further, let's go over the basics:
1) You are fictional. In the real world, anyway, which is really the only world that matters.
2) Your cooperation in all areas is very much appreciated. Failure to cooperate will result in undesirable consequences for you. We know more about you than you can possibly imagine, and will not hesitate to use that information against you if and when necessary. Alternatively we are bluffing. But then again we might not be. Haha.
3) Violence against members of the staff is not encouraged. We would prefer to keep as many of you alive as possible.
4) There is no way out, so don't even try.
- The Staff of Kenselton Hotel
P.S. The resident cooks have requested that you do not insult the food.'

There was no doorknob or handle on the door, but it slid smoothly aside when Neo touched it. He stepped out into a lobby of sorts; the room he had emerged from was the farthest right of six identical cubicles lined up on one side of it. To his far left, a corridor ran perpendicular to the line of cubicles, past the walls into the distance. Everything smelt new. Several metres before him, a standard-issue receptionist sat calmly in a covered booth and looked up as Neo approached.

"Fourth floor," she said with clinical precision, sliding an A5 sheet of paper out from her side of the desk, through the gap between the surface of the desk and the transparent bullet-proof plastic walls of the booth.

"Pick your own room. Mealtimes are stated here, and they are held at the cafeteria located on the second floor of the central block. This is the map if you have trouble locating anything. The lifts and stairs are down that way," – she pointed ahead down the corridor – "but you're wanted at room F62-03 first. Go up the corridor, second door to your left."

Neo picked up the sheet of paper. "What's going on here?"

"It's not my job to answer questions. Room F62-03. He's waiting."

"Hi, Neo!" Adwin greeted in Room F62-03. "Remember me?"

Neo didn't at first. A few years had passed for Adwin; he was no longer the pathetically annoying twenty-something guy whom Neo had met only briefly three months ago. Adwin had since grown into a pathetically annoying thirty-something guy. But the family resemblance was there – he was visibly Keith's brother.

"Thought you could run away, didja?" Adwin continued. "Not this time. This time, no one knows you're here. Doc Brown and his flying time machine aren't going to come and rescue you." Adwin grinned. "That's what you get for killing my brother."

This was news to Neo. "Keith's dead?"

Adwin scowled. "Don't play games with me."

Neo decided to leave the matter. "So what is this place?" he asked instead.

"Oh, this, yeah. This would be the new Kenselton Hotel. It's a hyperspatial underground complex with ten blocks, soon to be stocked with several thousand or more fictional characters for the general public to meet, have sex with, or kill. They have to pay, of course. You're one of the first here. Congratulations."

"Several thousand?"

Adwin grinned. "Yep. Enjoy your stay. Don't worry; you'll have food to eat and water to drink and a bed to sleep in, unless they run out of beds. You probably won't die. There are a fair amount of Keanu-haters out there with murderous tendencies, but I'll just direct 'em to one of the other guys when we get them here. I'll let you live, because that way you get to suffer for a longer time and watch as everyone dies around you." Adwin smiled brightly.

"Doctor Brown is going to find out," Neo said. "You can't bring thousands of people over without causing some kind of space-time disruption-"

"Do you honestly think that that old guy has nothing better to do than to monitor the space-time continuum? He only did it the last time because he had an experiment going on, and then because his best friend got zapped over here and he needed to go rescue him. It's not the case anymore. I bet," Adwin said, "that he's happily enjoying his life right now. Besides, all the 'disruptions' have been spaced out over a large spatial-temporal area of the multiverse. Nothing concentrated. Kinda hard to track down. You're on your own this time, Mr. Anderson. Face it."

Adwin leant back contentedly in his chair. "You may go," he added. "Fourth floor. I think your friend should be there by now."

"What friend?"

"Fourth floor. Lifts are that way."

The lift opened on the fourth floor with a soft ding. The lift lobby had only one exit, so Neo went through that into a stairwell with another door at right angles to him on his right; he went through that as well and emerged in the fourth floor corridor of Block F.

All was quiet, the only sound that of air circulating through vents and Neo's muted footsteps down the fluorescent-lit passageway. Again everything was new: the carpet, the walls, the neat rows of doors on both sides-

A sudden noise startled him as a door opened to his left. Then he recognised the teenager that stepped out, and blinked in surprise.

"...Ted?"

A sudden grin. "Neo!"

"What are you doing h-"

Ted grabbed him in a hug, cutting him off. "I missed you, dude," he said.

The teen pulled away with a smile and pointed at the room he had come out from. "That one's the biggest, and it's got a bathroom. Let's take it."

"How long have you been here?" Neo asked.

Ted shrugged. "About five minutes."

"What did they say to you when you got here?"

Another shrug. "This receptionist babe said to go to the fourth floor, so I went to the fourth floor and then you found me." A pause. "She was kinda cute." Another pause, then a more suspicious tone: "And I think she was a robot."

Ted frowned slightly, then dropped the matter with a shrug, moving past Neo towards the next room. "Hey, check out th-"

"Ted. Did she say anything else?"

"Huh? Oh. Nah... no, wait. Yeah. There was this notice thing on the door with lots of words on it. Something about how there's no escape, or something heinous like that..."

Ted looked as if some of this had finally sunk in. "What are they going to do with us, dude?"

Neo was silent. He pushed open the door nearest to him. Bunk beds on the left, closet on the right, table and chair against the opposite wall. He looked down at the rows of similar doors, and the rhetorical question escaped him in quiet despair:

"How many of us are there?"

Warm light flickered on when Neo flicked the light switch in the common room, which upon opening the door they had seen was much larger than the other rooms. A small round table a little way in front of them, chairs around it; a counter, coffee machine, water cooler, sink, stove, cupboards soon discovered to be stocked with utensils and food of the snack variety; a sofa, television set, an array of random DVD movies in an open cardboard box, and all over were the shelves – filled with strange things like white tablecloths and not so strange things like books. And boxes... lots of boxes, holding who knew what. Another bathroom sat at the corner furthest from the entrance.

Neo shook his head. "What is this place?" he asked, despite having already heard quite a satisfactory answer from Adwin.

"...There are a fair amount of Keanu-haters out there with murderous tendencies, but I'll just direct 'em to one of the other guys when we get them here…"

This floor could hold at least twenty, perhaps thirty, people.

"...watch as everyone dies around you..."

Neo sank down on the sofa.

He looked stressed.

Ted flopped down next to him. He looked at Neo.

Neo continued looking stressed and staring at his shoes.

Then some idiot kicked open the door.

They turned at the noise, only to see a gun suddenly swivel to point in their general direction, though far enough away that a shot might possibly miss.

Jack Traven's eyes briefly widened as recognition hit, his grasp on his gun slipping for half a second; then his SWAT training kicked in, and he tightened his grip, grit his teeth, and yelled:

"Who are you?" he demanded.

Neo slowly got off the sofa. Ted followed after, raising his arms in surrender, because that seemed to be the logical reaction to someone pointing a gun at you.

Jack took half a step back.

"We're unarmed," Neo said.

"Answer the question!"

Neo winced at the raised volume. "I'm Neo. He's Ted."

This information was not helping Jack at all. He moved closer, hoping that the gun looked more intimidating in close quarters.

"What do you want with me?"

"You could put that gun away-"

The soft click of the door being opened the proper way drew their attention. Conor O'Neill came in, saw the three of them, looked stunned, and then wondered why there was a gun pointed at him. He looked at the gun. He looked at Jack, and quickly raised his hands in surrender because that's the logical reaction to someone pointing a gun at you.

"Where do you people come from?" Jack shouted.

"Pizza," Conor volunteered, hoping for some sympathy for his interrupted dinner.

Neo stepped around the side of the sofa and spread his arms. "Look, no weapons."

The gun rapidly ditched Conor as target and turned back to point at Neo.

Neo concluded that Officer Traven was a trigger-happy idiot. "We have no reason to hurt you if you put your gun away," he said. "We're not the ones who brought you here. We don't know much more than you do."

Bloodcurdling screams erupted from somewhere a couple of floors up, followed by muted yelling and lots of thuds. Jack glanced briefly at the ceiling.

"We're all in this together, dude," Ted offered.

Jack considered this. Slowly, he lowered his gun and replaced it in its holster, ready to yank it out again if Neo or someone made any sudden moves.

Conor dropped his arms. He glanced around, then moved a little closer to the other three.

"Same actor?" he asked.

"Yeah," Neo confirmed.

Conor nodded. "Thought so." He looked at Jack, and held out his left hand. "Conor O'Neill."

Jack looked at him in disbelief. He felt first entitled to at least one nervous breakdown or a psychotic yelling spree or-

Conor's hand was still extended.

Jack swallowed, and took it in a brief handshake.

"Jack Traven."

Their hands were a perfect fit. They both felt it – the distinct weird of two left hands meeting itself, the tactile recognition of same skin, fingers, grasp; they broke off the handshake and lapsed into awkward silence.

Conor brushed his left hand with his right; half-folded his arms, unfolded them, stuck his hand into his pocket. Jack was staring at him with an uncomfortable wariness. Conor looked away, to the floor, suddenly hit with the contradicting sensations of being the only one in the room and not really being there himself. He backed against the sofa, felt its comforting presence against his back and palm of his right hand that told him that, for the moment at least, he still existed and was probably not an illusion. He took a deep breath. Still alive. Still real. Still breathing.

"Okay," he said, in a half-mutter mostly for his own benefit. "Okay."

Conor gripped at the sofa, the soft leather folding under his fingers, and finally deigned to look up again, his eyes not quite focusing. "Um. Uh... so... uh, what do you... what do you know about this place?" he asked Neo.

"It's a hotel," Neo said after several seconds of hesitation.

Conor raised an eyebrow.

"They're bringing people over," Neo continued, encouraged by the visual gratitude. "People from different universes. Who are fictional here, in this one."

"Why?" Jack asked.

Neo looked uncomfortable. He didn't like being stared at and asked questions. He glanced at Ted, hoping for inspiration. Ted looked back at him in a most unhelpful way. "Money," Neo said finally. "Sex. Murder. Just... yeah. Things like that. This... guy up on the top floor just now told me-"

"What guy?" Conor asked.

"His name's Adwin. He's the... brother of the one who invented the machine that brought us here."

"You know him?"

Neo nodded. "We've been here before." He gestured briefly at Ted, who appeared to be reluctantly falling asleep on the sofa.

Conor narrowed his eyes at Neo. "You've been here before," he repeated.

"-Not here, exactly," Neo said, really wishing that everyone would stop staring at him because it was making him nervous and less capable of constructing coherent sentences. "This universe. But, uh, we got out, in a... time machine that could travel to alternate universes-"

"You've been here before?" Jack interrupted. "Why?"

"I think we were one of the first experiments. To make sure the machine worked. And then we got rescued, and it probably pissed them off a little so they got us back."

"How did you get rescued?" Conor asked.

"By a friend of one of the others who got taken. He was a scientist. We managed to e-mail him, he traced it to this universe, and came to get us."

"Could you do that again?" Conor asked.

"I don't know," Neo said. "I don't even know where we are. The last time we managed to get out of the place, and we had a specific address. But here... I haven't even seen a single window. We could be anywhere."

And Neo went on and told them everything else he knew; he gave them the condensed version of the events that had transpired the previous time he and Ted met; he told them about Keanu Reeves ("How'd you spell that?" Conor asked; Neo obliged with the spelling, whereupon Conor spent several seconds finding new creative ways of getting the pronunciation wrong); he told them what Adwin had just told him about Kenselton Hotel, leaving out the bit about everyone dying because that sort of thing wasn't nice to hear.

"So that's the guy running this thing?" Jack asked.

"I don't think so. It's too big for just one person. He's the one behind the idea, but I think that's it."

"I want to meet him."

"Now?"

"Yeah."

Neo started moving; they followed him out into the corridor, Conor with his hands in his pockets trying not to look at anyone. Neo held the stairwell door open and let the others pass through first, then into the lift lobby, the lift just a few floors away. They waited in silence, then created a momentary human traffic jam when the lift arrived and they tried to enter at the same time; into the lift car, doors shut, 62nd floor.

There was no one in room F62-03.

"You should have got him when you had the chance," Jack said.

"And then what?" Neo asked, as they trudged down the empty corridor of the 62nd floor.

"He's around somewhere," Conor said. "He's gotta be. If not it means there's a way out-"

A guard named Harold the Straight materialised in the teleportation bay on their left and narrowed his eyes at them. "What are the four of you doing here?" he asked.

Conor made a sudden lunge forward to grab Harold the Straight, only to be thrown back against the wall yelling in pain as the guard's electric force field did its duty.

"Whoa," Ted breathed. Harold the Straight looked dispassionately at him, then back at Conor. "Rule number 3," he quoted. "Violence against members of the staff is not encouraged. We would prefer to keep as many of you alive as possible."

"What do you want with us?" Jack shouted.

"It doesn't matter," Harold the Straight said. "You're not getting out of here, and that's all you really need to know. Get back to your floor."

Neo stole a peek into the teleportation bay, but it was just an empty capsule. He saw no electronics anywhere that could be fiddled with.

"Why?" Jack asked.

"You're disrupting the peace and order," Harold the Straight replied.

Part of the strict organisation of Kenselton Hotel involved ensuring that people went where they were told to go, which is why arrivals were staggered. If a character arrived alone and was met with nothing but a possibly-robot receptionist behind a bullet-proof, lightsaber-proof, Terminator-proof partition who told him or her nothing except to go to a certain floor, chances are highly in favour of the character going to said floor, if nothing else for the simple reason that it might hold some answers.

However, if there happened to be other people around at the time, there would be a markedly lower incentive to be obedient, and a markedly higher incentive to run around the hotel planning gang attacks and disrupting the peace.

"What happens if we don't go back, huh?" Conor pressed on.

"If you don't go back, you'll be disrupting the peace and order," Harold the Straight said. "Oh no. We can't have that."

"Why not, dude?" Ted asked.

Harold the Straight smiled. The air around them crackled with a sudden stinging burst of electricity that vanished after a second.

They got the hint.

"Let's get out of here," Neo muttered.

"Enjoy these few days!" Harold the Straight called sadistically after them as they left. He giggled. "After this, Kenselton Hotel goes public, and then the fun will begin!"

Back in the common room.

Conor sat at the table fitfully tapping his fingers on it and staring off into space. Ted was on the sofa, on the verge of falling asleep but not wanting to leave for the beds next door because that would mean missing out on whatever interesting thing happened in here. Neo sat on the edge of the sofa watching Jack, who was pacing about and looking angry.

"There has to be a way out," Jack said, shaking his head, though even to him the prospect of searching eleven blocks – ten of which had over sixty floors – for an exit was not a particularly appealing prospect. "They can't do this to us."

Conor gave up on the tapping and did a brief and messy search through the cupboards near him. He discovered a bar of chocolate, pocketed it, then found a packet of potato chips, tore it open, and munched on its contents as he kicked the cupboard door shut against another packet of potato chips that had fallen in the way.

"Maybe there is a way out," Conor said after swallowing a mouthful of chewed-up chips. "Just because they say there isn't one doesn't mean there isn't."

He dug the map he'd been given out of his pocket and studied it as he ate. Eleven blocks. The main one held lots of fun places, as well as a hospital for when the fun places became not so fun. It also had a bar, where people could then go to to make things fun again.

The bar sounded like a fun place to be.

"This place has a bar," Conor said, sounding more than a little incredulous and just a little happy.

Aside from the bar, it was another sign of how considerate they were that Kenselton Hotel made efforts to ensure that its time and that of the folks they zapped over were roughly in sync – give or take a few hours – to minimise jetlag.

Ted had fallen asleep. His head dropped against the back of Neo's shoulder. Neo reached a hand behind him and pushed it back.

Ted's head dropped down again, supported by nothing but his neck. Neo grimaced. He got off the edge of the sofa and went to shift Ted into a position that would be less painful for The One. Ted made vague noises. His left arm slid off the sofa and dangled there as he lay.

Neo looked at him. He suddenly felt tired.

"Good night," he said, walking past Jack and Conor ("You're going to sleep?" Jack asked in disbelief), and he left the room for the one next to it, which had beds and a bathroom and a... computer.

Neo suddenly felt not-tired.

Jack Traven slept on the floor of the common room that night. He did not intend to get into one of the beds, because that would mean that he was going along with the sadistic little games of whoever ran this place. The last thing he wanted was to give them that satisfaction.

Conor got a bed.

No one at Kenselton Facility noticed either way. There were thousands of surveillance cameras all over the hotel, and hiring staff to watch all of them would just be a waste of money. Besides, most of them just ended up playing Minesweeper or Spider Solitaire or writing fan fiction when they were supposed to be working.

Conor shut the door to his room and just stood there for a moment with his hand against it, looking at it in the dim light that seeped through from the corridor.

He swallowed, shook his head, then left the door and pulled off his jacket. He chucked it over the chair and climbed onto the bottom bunk bed. Sheets, pillow, blanket. He lay there staring out into the rest of the room. Voluntary imprisonment, he thought. What was he doing here; why wasn't he out there trying to get out...

He rolled over fitfully in his bed. Weariness crept up on him and blurred thoughts of escape.

He fell asleep shortly after and dreamt of corridors that had no end, running up and down through rooms and stairwells, past endless doors and windowless walls until he woke up in a claustrophobic sweat; only to drift back to sleep once more, and forget.

Next morning
62nd Floor. Arrival Lobby, Block F, Kenselton Hotel

Regaining consciousness and standing up, John Constantine glared at the notice on the door.

"You've got to be kidding me," he said.

The possibly-robot receptionist told him to go to the fourth floor.

Nobody tells John Constantine where to go.

"Let me out of here," John said to Harold the Straight.

"Can't do that," said Harold the Straight.

"Who brought me here? How did I get here?"

Harold the Straight shrugged. "The same way all of us did. Get moving. You're supposed to be on the fourth floor."

John Constantine does not like being told where to go.

But John Constantine does not like electric shocks either.

Jack woke up, realised that it hadn't been a dream, and let out a muttered curse. He got off the floor. He ached all over, because that's what you get for sleeping on the floor. He was the only one in the room; Ted had been the first up, and his whereabouts were soon discovered as Jack got out into the corridor and saw the teen backed against the wall and staring nervously up the barrel of a very nice flamethrower.

The last thing John Constantine wants upon being forced to go where people tell him to is to find some overly-happy specimen of a teenager who looks almost exactly like him cheerfully greeting him and calling him 'dude'. From his experience, such creatures were probably evil minions from Hell.

Ted just wanted to know what he had done wrong, and if he could have a go with the flamethrower because it looked like most excellent fun.

Conor woke and noted with disappointment that his little interdimensional kidnapping had really happened.

He heard voices in the corridor:

"Who are you?"

"His name is Ted. Let him go."

He got off the lower bunk. He didn't hurt at all. That's what you get for going along with Kenselton Hotel's sadistic little games and using the beds.

Conor opened the room's door and gazed sleepily out. The recently-released Ted was creeping off to safety in the general direction of Neo's room.

John looked at Conor.

"...Welcome to the family," Conor said.

John's hand slowly moved towards the secret bottle of holy water that he carried around everywhere just for fun. The first minion from Hell had crawled off, the second was a little out of range, but the third looked within splashing distance...

"Dude, wake up."

Ted's hand accidentally brushed the mouse and brought the computer out of sleep mode. Multiple Internet windows were open, most of them displaying the IMDb pages of various Keanu Reeves movies.

Neo had decided that it couldn't hurt to know more about his floormates.

Other Internet windows displayed various Matrix-related websites, because this was exactly the kind of situation where Googling oneself was way too big a temptation, and one that Neo had eventually succumbed to.

Now he opened his eyes and raised his head from the desk. His neck hurt. That's what you get for falling asleep at the computer.

From outside they could hear curious splashing noises and angry yells. Neo wasn't too sure that he wanted to know what was going on out there.

"What's going on out there?" he asked nonetheless.

Ted shrugged. "New dude. He has this totally excellent flamethrower, but then he pointed it at me."

Neo scratched his neck. He felt hungry. He remembered something about meals on the second floor of the central block. He looked at Ted. "Are you hungry?"

"Yeah."

"Let's go, then."

So they left the room, glanced briefly at Jack and a slightly damp Conor angrily holding John against the wall and yelling at him ("Catcha later, dudes!" Ted said), then trooped past them and out the stairwell door in search of breakfast.

The map claimed that the ten blocks connected to the central one on the fifth floor. The lifts looked busy, so they climbed up the one floor via the stairs; went through the connecting corridor via the lift lobby and emerged in the funness of the central block. Signs hanging from the ceiling informed them that the hospital was just upstairs. One floor down was the bar, currently still fairly empty. Other interesting places were all around. They ignored them and joined the small groups of people trailing into the cafeteria on the second floor.

The cafeteria is the largest room in Kenselton Hotel. Located in the central non-residential block, it is half the size of a football field and filled with neatly arranged tables and benches. Gourmet chefs cheerfully whip up the meals that are served from behind the food counters. Vending machines giving free drinks and snacks line the walls. The bright, spacious room is spotless and white – the standard-issue cleaners do a good job.
The place is free-seating, though characters played by the same actor tend to congregate, probably due to a craving for familiarity in this strange world they have been zapped into. There are a fair number of exceptions – mainly those who are sick of seeing their own face, and those who prefer to stick around friends or family who have been brought over as well.
It is in fact at the cafeteria that many meet people whom they had resigned themselves to probably never seeing again. Tearful reunions – upon identity confirmations – are common.
The British Holdout group staked a claim on two tables in one of the cafeteria's four corners. Ever since then, those two tables have seen more than their fair share of tea stains.

The cafeteria was the largest room that Neo had ever seen. Doorways at various intervals all around led out towards the ten separate blocks. The whole second floor was itself located in its own separate bubble of hyperspace, and took up much more room than its outside dimensions would suggest. Its walls rose up high several stories, its ceiling an unreachable plane of gleaming white.

The standard-issue gourmet chef beamed at Neo and greeted him in his native language. Translated into English, it said: "Good morning, sir. Would you like some breakfast?" By a rather unfortunate coincidence, that same greeting in Huttese sounded exactly like: "My, your grandma sure has stinky toes."

This is all the more curious when taking into account the fact that Hutts don't have toes.

Neo and Ted got their food and sat down at a table near the Block F entrance. They were eventually joined by Jack, a less damp Conor and a somewhat subdued John.

"Hi," Conor said.

Neo ignored them and continued eating. He was feeling antisocial this morning.

Breakfast proceeded largely in silence and avoided gazes. A smattering of other Kenselton Hotel residents were seated at various other parts of the cafeteria in close groups that kept to themselves. No one talked much, let alone attempted escape. That would require cooperation; and cooperation was not something they were up to at the moment.

Discipline in Kenselton Hotel is kept largely through psychological means. One of the reasons – apart from the whole OCD obsession with organisation – why they stick characters played by the same actor together has to do with the fact that it tends to make people highly self-conscious, and when people are too busy being highly self-conscious, they usually lack the ability or desire to go around running riot and causing unwanted trouble.
The folks responsible for Kenselton Hotel however acknowledged that this system was not foolproof, and as such intended to make use of the concept of the Panopticon and its surveillance system as a form of second tier defence. Because of this, they installed thousands of cameras all over Kenselton Hotel, the basis of the Panopticon's discipline being that if people know they are constantly being watched, they tend to behave out of fear of punishment from the virtually-guaranteed discovery.
The folks responsible for Kenselton Hotel however forgot to put into play the most crucial part of this system – to let the characters know that they were being watched.
As such, they forgot – so no one in Kenselton Hotel was aware that there were cameras trained on them practically everywhere, and this had no effect whatsoever on their behaviour.
Although, seeing as how most of the camera footage went unwatched due to shortage of staff, it probably didn't matter anyway.

The stairwell door on the fourth floor of Block F cautiously opened. David Allen Griffin peeked in. The place looked deserted, and he deemed it safe enough to enter. There was a patch of wet carpet on the floor. He wondered at it, then went to see what was behind the open door.

The computer was still on; Griffin glanced casually at the screen, then did a double take.

He stared, scanning through several paragraphs of words in the open Internet window, then curiosity got the better of him and he sat down at the desk.

So it came to pass that when Neo finished his breakfast and returned to the fourth floor in hopes of reunion with his beloved computer, he found the chair already occupied.

"Hello," Griffin said instead after a moment's hesitation, and gave Neo a creepy smile that said I know all about you. "Mr. Anderson, is it?"

Neo just looked slightly stunned.

"David Allen Griffin at your service." He gestured at the computer. "That was very educational," he said.

Neo swallowed. "Who gave you permission to touch that?" he asked.

"Hey. I came in, no one was around, the computer was on-"

Jack entered, wondering what all the conversation was about. He saw Griffin sitting there with a maddening smile on his face and decided that he didn't like him.

"What were you doing?" Jack asked.

"Research," Griffin replied. "You know – just looking into your personal histories, finding out useful information about you. Like he was doing." He pointed at Neo, who glared at him.

Jack strode over to the computer and gave the screen a look-over. He paled. He turned to face Neo. "That," he said, jabbing at the screen, "is private information!"

Conor and Ted came in. John Constantine did not, having retired in a fit of anti-sociality to the next room to smoke and think about how much life sucked.

"What's up?" Conor asked, feeling lost.

Neo nodded resignedly. "Fine, I'll stop."

"Stop what?" Conor asked, feeling even more lost.

Neo walked up to Griffin. "Out of the chair," he said.

Griffin got out of the chair. Ted looked suspiciously at him. Neo sat down and closed the Internet windows.

Conor stood about scuffing his shoes on the carpet and feeling ignored.

"How much did you find out?" Jack asked Griffin, fixing him with a stare.

"Why aren't you asking him that question?" Griffin asked, pointing at Neo. "All I did was come in here."

"How long have you been here?" Jack asked, not letting him off.

"I don't know. I didn't time myself." Griffin glanced at his watch. "But I haven't had breakfast. Second floor, right?" He slid out of Jack's gaze and brushed past Conor out the doorway. "See you later, Officer Traven."

"...What was that all about?" Conor asked when Griffin had gone.

"Invasion of privacy," Jack said. "I'm getting out of this place. Who's with me?"

"How're you gonna get out, dude?" Ted asked.

"I don't know yet. I'll find a way. You coming?"

Ted looked at Neo. Neo looked at his computer and didn't seem to acknowledge the existence of anything else. Ted shrugged. "Sure."

"Yeah, I'll go," Conor volunteered, and the three of them left the room.

Neo cast a surreptitious glance at the doorway to make sure that they were truly gone, then opened up a game of Minesweeper and started clicking.

'There is no exit here', read the handwritten sign pasted on the door leading to the first floor's corridor.

Conor raised his hands in despair and dropped them. "Great," he muttered.

Jack knocked on the door.

"If you're not one of us, go away," said an annoyed voice, its owner the self-proclaimed gatekeeper of the first floor's door.

"Are you sure there's no way out in there?" Jack asked.

"We're sure. And you're not one of us. Shoo."

"What's at the other end, through the stairwell?"

"A wall."

"Have you tried knocking through it?" Conor asked.

"No, but several folks from the fifteenth floor did."

"Did they manage it?" Conor asked.

"Yes."

"So what did they find?"

"Another wall."

"Whoa," said Ted, a look of complete awe on his face.

"Then we managed to kick 'em out."

Some confused-looking guy had meanwhile come out of the lift lobby and had been watching the exchange with puzzlement. "Er," he ventured during the break in the conversation, "I was told to come here..."

The door opened. They had a brief glimpse of a corridor whose end was filled with bits of plaster and a gaping hole revealing a brick wall. Some hapless guy was down on the floor attempting to clean up the plaster.

"Get in there," the sentry said with a jerk of his head in the requested direction, and the newcomer went in looking confused. "Not you thr-" His eyes narrowed in recognition, and he swore. "Hey, you're-" A pause, then he looked back into the corridor and called out: "Hey, Joe! There are Keanu-spawn out here!" He looked back at them, laughed in a not-too-friendly way, and then closed the door in their faces. "Shoo," he added through the closed door, in case the previous pleas to leave had not quite got through to them.

"'Keanu-spawn'?" Conor asked incredulously.

Jack was meanwhile staring at the grey cement of the stairwell landing. He stamped at it, then stopped and looked back up. "This is the lowest floor, right?" he asked.

"How would we know, dude?"

"There's got to be something we could use to break through..."

Jack trailed off, then suddenly turned and headed back up the stairwell to the fourth floor, Conor and Ted following behind.

Jack didn't quite know what he was looking for; a sledgehammer, perhaps, or a pneumatic drill, but until then the boxes stacked on the shelves and floor of the common room seemed filled with whole lots of interesting and mostly-useless things, such as a brand-new copy of a 1987 Singapore postal code directory whose existence in Kenselton Hotel was completely inexplicable and had probably just been put there for the lulz.

Conor had given up watching him and had gone to rummage through the DVD collection. He flipped through several with no comment, and then he reached a Keanu film. He looked at its cover, hesitated, then flipped it back and stood up. He looked at the box. He used his leg to close its flaps. He stood there a while longer, then looked at the TV, picked up the remote control, and turned the TV on. Some cartoon was showing. Conor walked over to the sofa and slumped down on it.

Neo entered the room in search of water, Ted trailing behind him out of sheer boredom and having nothing better to do than to follow The One around the place.

"Stop following me," Neo muttered as he got a cup and filled it at the water cooler.

"I'm bored, dude," Ted said by way of explanation, and then he realised that the TV was on and screening a most excellent cartoon. His face lit up. He left Neo and went to join Conor on the sofa.

Neo finished his drink, left the cup in the sink and headed back out to his beloved computer; when his joyous reunion was rudely interrupted by the recently-arrived Dr. Julian Mercer, who stared at him as he left the common room.

Neo then realised that nothing was stopping him from continuing on to his beloved computer. So he opened the door to his room-

"Who are you?"

-and mentally swore. Annoyed, he turned to face Julian, trying his best to non-verbally communicate the fact that all he wanted was to get back to the computer, plus he knew kung fu so it really wouldn't be a good idea to try and stop him like he was doing now.

Julian backed off a little. Neo took that as a sign that successful communication had been managed.

Julian looked traumatised. Neo inwardly sighed. "Next door," he said by way of assistance, then went into the room and shut the door.

The problem about the phrase 'next door' is that it can, when the instruction is given near a room flanked by two others, refer to either of two rooms.

So it was that John Constantine found his little smoking break interrupted by some guy who looked a lot like those doctors who wouldn't quit pestering him to quit smoking.

This did not make him happy at all. He glared at Julian, who stumbled back, coughing, out the quickly-slammed-shut door, where he leant against the wall and hyperventilated.

Some teenager named Jesse Walker came through the stairwell door and stared at him.

"Whoa," Jesse said.

"Hi," he added to Julian, walking up to him. "What's going on here?"

Julian just continued looking traumatised.

"Is there anyone else around?"

Julian gave a traumatised nod.

Jesse pushed open the nearest door and was engulfed in cigarette smoke; closed it, pushed open the next, decided that Neo and his beloved computer did not look that interesting; closed that, opened the next, and perked up as he saw signs of life in the forms of Jack, Ted and Conor.

"Hi," he greeted.

Jack had just discovered a disemdoored door bolt and a nice big tube of super-Superglue. He decided that they might be useful in the future, and kept them to a side.

Jesse felt sad and neglected. Then he saw that the TV was on, and screening a most excellent cartoon, and went to join Conor and Ted on the sofa.

Back from his breakfast, Griffin saw Julian standing by the side of the corridor looking dazed and not quite there. He smiled and went up to him.

"Hi. I'm David," he said. "What's your name?"

Dr. Mercer wondered if he was still capable of speech, and realised that he was. "Julian," he said after some hesitation. "Julian Mercer."

"Everyone's inside there, huh?" Griffin asked, leaning against the opposite wall and gesturing at the common room.

Julian wouldn't have known either way, seeing as how he had yet to set foot inside the common room. He however decided that said location was probably what that antisocial geeky-looking fellow had meant when he said "next door".

The door slid open at a touch.

"Fourth floor. Pick your own room. Mea-"

"How did I get here?" Alex Wyler interrupted.

"-Mealtimes are stated here, and they are held at the cafeteria located on the second floor of the central block. This is the map if you have trouble locating anything. The lifts and stairs are down that way."

"What is this place?"

"Read the notice on that door. Fourth floor. Get moving."

Alex didn't budge. "What do they want with me?"

The possibly-robot receptionist wasn't happy at being questioned. She much preferred the obedient ones who just went where they were told, rather than those who kept asking questions. There were some on every floor...

"Look, I'm just a regular guy," Alex continued, studiously trying to ignore the thoughts about his personal time travelling postal service. "There's no reason... This has gotta be a mistake. I've got a family. I've got to get back to them."

"Fourth floor," the receptionist suggested hopefully.

"Who runs this place? Let me talk to them-"

"I just work here. Fourth floor, please. You're holding up the entire schedule for the block." She glanced at a timer on her desk counting steadily down from one minute. When it hit zero, she was allowed to call for guards.

"Who are you getting your orders from?"

"What orders?"

"The ones that tell you to sit in that booth not answering questions."

"Those are not orders. That is my purpose. I have always been here. I will always be here. Fourth floor, please."

Alex frowned slightly.

"Do I need to call the guards?"

Alex shook his head and went off to the fourth floor.

Entering the corridor, he stopped and stared.

"Welcome to Kenselton Hotel," Griffin said.

Alex took cautious steps forward. Julian was staring resolutely at the floor.

Alex started to say something, then stopped. He started to say something else, then stopped as well. No words were coming.

Griffin gave up hope of further conversation and wandered into the common room.

"...Hi," Alex said tentatively at Julian.

"Hi," Julian said in return, thus continuing the scintillating conversation that Griffin wouldn't have missed if he'd just stayed on a little while longer.

There was silence as Alex worked out as much of the situation as he could from what he had seen thus far.

"Where were you before you got here?" he finally asked Julian, forcefully extending the conversation past its natural shelf life.

"Train station," Julian said cryptically. "You?"

"I was... walking," Alex said vaguely.

A pause.

"I'm Alex," Alex said.

"Julian."

Alex nodded. They went back to staring awkwardly at the floor.

Back in the common room, Jack was still rooting through the boxes of random things stacked about the many shelves. He had just found a small blue cube with a big red button on it that said 'Please do not press this button' in nice friendly letters.

His curiosity got the better of SWAT instincts. He pressed the button. Nothing happened. He frowned and chucked it aside.

Unknown to Officer Traven, he had just destroyed an entire galaxy in a particularly cheery part of the multiverse. Enraged at the loss to the point of uncheeriness, the residents of nearby galaxies mounted a full scale investigation into the cause of the unprecedented disaster. They eventually tracked down the cube-makers to another part of the multiverse, refused to believe their pathetic claims that honestly they hadn't done anything and it wasn't like they had anything against the destroyed folks because they had whole planets filled with those little blue cubes, each with the power to destroy a galaxy in a given universe, because they were just into that sort of thing so could they please go now?

The two universes went to war. Trillions of lives were lost. Quintillions more were lost when several blue cubes were accidentally activated in the chaos of battle. The whole fiasco would go down in history as the bloodiest the multiverse had ever seen.

Jack Traven found a packet of tampons. This place confused him. He chucked it aside as well.

"Do you really believe you can get out of here?"

Jack turned, a random Barney & Friends pencil case in his hand, to see Griffin standing by the shelf, hands in his pockets.

"Why not?" he asked.

A smirk. "Does this place look like some shoddily put together prison?" Griffin asked. "The rooms. The floors. The movies in that box. It's obvious that it's all been carefully designed. If we're not supposed to get out, we won't be able to."

"So what do we do, sit here and die?" Jack asked tersely, subconsciously holding up the green-and-purple pencil case in a threatening sort of way.

Griffin glanced back at the three people sitting on the sofa watching TV. "They look pretty content to me," he said.

Jack shook his head and went back to looking through the boxes.

"So... what's the plan, Jack? Blow up a wall? Punch through the ground? I'm sure they'd have thought of that."

Griffin ambled over to the small pile of useful things that Jack had put aside. He pulled his left hand out of his pocket and picked up the hammer. "A hammer," he said with a low laugh. He put that down and picked up the next item. "An ice pick-"

Jack turned and pointed a finger at his small pile of useful things. "Don't touch that," he said through gritted teeth.

So Griffin put the ice pick down and just stood there, watching Jack.

"We're all going to die here, you know," Griffin said after a while.

"No we're not." Jack closed the box and scooped his hammer and ice pick and stress ball off the table.

"You think you've got all this under control, don't you?" Griffin asked quietly as Jack stalked past him and out the door.

The noise from the TV receded into the background as Alex Wyler sat at the table, lost in his thoughts and trying to quell the worried panic over what impact his sudden disappearance would have had on his family. Kate and the kid. Perhaps they were here as well, but Kenselton Hotel was far too vast for a proper search to be done.

Julian had taken a room and locked himself in it. Jesse and Ted were still engrossed in some inane cartoon. Conor had abandoned them in the pursuit of happiness and alcohol.

The air conditioning hummed away.

Alex left the room and went to wait in the corridor by the stairwell door. Eventually it opened and a teenager entered; he stared at Alex, then he grew wide-eyed and stumbled backwards, fumbling at the door handle in panic as the older Keanu-spawn approached.

"It's okay," Alex said quietly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The teen pressed himself back against the door, hyperventilating, gripping the door handle for comfort-

"What's your name?" Alex asked.

A strangled silence. "Eddie," he said finally.

"I'm Alex." He gestured at the door. "We shouldn't stand here. People might be coming in."

"Hello, Jack."

"Why do you keep following me?"

Griffin smiled. "You're a cop. I like cops." A pause. "Can we be friends?"

Jack turned and jabbed a finger at him. "Stay away from me."

Griffin frowned slightly. "That's not a good start."

"Yes it is."

Jack continued walking down the stairwell, squeezing his stress ball for comfort.

Conor's wrist tag gave a digital beep as he entered The Salty Snail, Kenselton Hotel's very own bar. Dim lights, drunk people and the smell of alcohol hit him as he entered looking for an age-restricted beverage. He surreptitiously stole a packet of free peanuts from a table and stuffed it into his pocket. He looked up at the disco lights. He looked down at the drunk people on the floor-

"Hey, you!" someone said.

Conor wondered about the best way to navigate around the inebriated teenager lying by his feet.

Someone prodded him. "Hey!"

Conor jumped. A uniformed Kenselton Hotel bar staff was standing there, holding a box-like electrical contraption. "206?"

Conor suddenly felt guilty about the peanuts. "What?"

"Yep," she confirmed, running the contraption in a quick sweep over the general vicinity of his wrist tag. "Get that guy there back to your floor, will ya?" she asked, pointing at one of the unconscious forms at the bar counter. "He's taking up space."

"What-" Conor started again, but she had vanished into the crowd, and didn't seem to care much about the peanuts.

He looked at the unconscious person in question, grimaced, and made his way through the crowd towards him. Arriving, he shifted aside the one-third-full glass of age-restricted beverage and hunched down on the counter to briefly study the guy's face. Yep, Keanu-spawn.

"Hey," he said.

Eyes opened slowly and tried to focus on Conor.

It could have been him instead, Conor thought. Just a few drinks later. Judging from the number of seriously drunk people lying about, this place had good beer. Or just a lot of sorrows that needed drowning.

Conor clapped a hand on the other's back. "Come on, buddy," he said. "Let's get out of here. Can you walk, or do I need to drag you?"

"...You owe me a drink," Conor muttered some time later as he trudged back to the fourth floor of Block F, the other guy's feet dragging along the floor, arm hanging inanimately around Conor's neck.

There was a newcomer standing on the fourth floor landing gazing thoughtfully at the door when Conor dragged his semi-conscious bar souvenir up the last bit of stairs.

The newcomer took a reflexive step back, staring at them-

"Hi," Conor said. "Uh, can you give me a hand here?"

A pause, then: "Sure," and Conor gratefully shifted over some of the weight. He kicked at the door. It wouldn't open. He turned the handle, and it did.

They entered the corridor. Alex and Eddie Talbot were sitting against the wall, talking quietly about something or other. Alex glanced briefly at them, then returned to the conversation.

They unloaded the human bar souvenir onto the lower bunk bed of an empty room.

Conor lifted up the left arm and made it join the rest of its body on the bed. "I'm Conor," he said. "He's drunk. And you are?"

"Paul," replied the other, pushing the left leg into place and wondering if it might have been a better idea to lay the fellow on his back instead. "Paul Sutton."

Conor nodded. "Thanks for your help."

Alex came through the doorway, looking at the semi-conscious individual on the bed.

"And that's Alex," Conor said, gesturing vaguely.

Alex looked up.

"...That's Paul, that's drunk." Conor headed for the door. "And I need a drink."

"He's up."

Eyes staring, trying to focus; rolling onto his side, sitting up in bed, hand going to his head which kind of hurt.

"Feeling better?" Paul asked.

Jjaks rubbed his eyes and blinked. The other two in the room looked at him from where they sat against the wall, a moment ago in quiet conversation.

"Where am I?" Jjaks finally managed.

"Fourth floor of Kenselton Hotel," Alex said. "Conor brought you here."

The words seemed to dredge up some vague memory from the recent past; but before he could attempt to reorganise his thoughts, he suddenly became aware of shouting going on somewhere outside the room-

Alex stood up and opened the door, and the external commotion hit them full force.

"You want to get out? Really? Why don't you try?"

"They can't keep me here. They can't-"

"Go look for Jack! He's trying to ICE-PICK HIS WAY OUT THE FLOOR!"

"And what about you, huh? You're just gonna stay here?"

Conor spread his arms wide. "See any other option, kid?"

The newcomer grit his teeth. "I'm not a kid. I'm an FBI agent."

"Right..."

Johnny Utah shoved him angrily against the wall. Conor caught sight of Alex and opened his palm in a stationary wave. Alex folded his arms.

"How can you just stay here and not do anything?" Johnny hollered.

Conor pushed him away. "Hey. There's free food. I'm not complaining."

"Hah. You can get free food in jail!"

"Are you threatening to arrest me?"

Johnny swallowed. Feeling suddenly watched, he looked behind him and caught sight of Alex calmly watching the proceedings.

"How many of you are there?" Johnny yelled.

Conor shrugged. "I don't know. Never counted."

The door behind him opened and Ted slid out. "Neo says to keep quiet or he'll totally prove that he knows kung fu."

"What's he doing in there?" Alex asked.

"Working on some computer thing," Ted said uncertainly. "There're these grey squares, see, with this face on top, and he clicks on the squares, and then they become numbers. He says it's to hack into the-"

"He's playing Minesweeper?" Alex interrupted, going over. "Excuse me." He pushed open the door and went in to startle Neo.

"I'm still here!" Johnny shouted, in case anyone had forgotten.

"I noticed," Conor said, because he hadn't forgotten. He wandered towards the next door to see if Alex's departure meant that the drunk guy was no longer unconscious, when Johnny angrily grabbed the front of his shirt.

"Don't you have any desire, whatsoever, to get out of here?"

Conor looked at him. "We are in a box," he stated, sticking his hands out to illustrate two walls. "No windows. No exits. Just walls. Understand that? There's no way out. Deal with it."

"You said someone named Jack was-"

"Jack Traven is on the first floor of this building," Conor said. "He is trying to break his way out of the floor with a hammer, an ice pick, and a stress ball. Let me go."

Johnny glared at him a while more, then released his shirt and ran off in search of Jack, whom he had decided was the only sane person in this place.

There was actually a hole in the floor by the time Johnny Utah arrived. Jack was not alone; about five other like-minded folks from their block were crouched around a spot on the first floor stairwell, surrounded in their cramped quarters by various interesting tools like hammers, screwdrivers and Jack's ice pick.

Most of those tools proved fairly useless and had been chucked aside; but there was a hole in the floor, and some people were trying to make it bigger, while other people were saying that that probably wasn't a good idea because they couldn't see anything but darkness past that hole and who knew what sort of danger they might be opening themselves up to-

"Uh... Jack?" Johnny tried.

Jack turned his head towards the voice and looked up at him. "Who are you?" he asked, and then returned his gaze to the much-more interesting hole in the floor. He suggested getting it big enough to lower someone through to see what lay beyond. Someone else said sure, as long as another person volunteered to go through because she wasn't going.

The first-floor corridor's door flew open. The irate sentry guy was still there. "Hacking up our floor now, huh?" he asked. "Walls weren't enough for you?"

"It's not like you're staying here forever," came a rebuttal. "It's a prison, you understand? We want to get out. So shut up and stop whining."

"Yeah!" came the agreement of the other floor-hackers.

The door slammed shut.

"Try to see if you can see anything..."

Someone got down onto the floor and pressed his eye to the hole.

"Nothing," he reported.

"Really nothing at all?"

"Yeah. But it's too dark. There might be things I can't see."

"It's the bottom of a building," Jack said. "We just need to be able to tunnel out-"

"I don't think we can do that," said the guy with his eye at the hole. "Seriously – nothing. No ground, nothing." He raised his head and shifted his position slightly. He hesitated, then stuck his hand slowly through the hole. He wiggled his fingers. He extracted his hand and shook his head. "There's nothing there."

The floor hackers stared at their little window to the void.

"What's this building standing on?" someone asked. "It's got to be standing on something."

Jack picked up one of the bigger pieces of rubble and dropped it through the hole. They waited for a sound to mark its landing. The sound never came.

"...Nothing," Jack said.

Silence.

"Now what?"

"Okay," someone said. "We've broken through the wall, and there's nothing there, and there's nothing through the floor. So we could either try the other sides of the building or try breaking out through the top – maybe we're hanging from something instead of standing on anything..."

They took a moment to digest the mental picture of ten blocks of over sixty stories each dangling from somewhere with nothing below them but a huge, black void.

"And what if there's nothing there either?" someone asked.

"Then we're screwed."

Alex returned to the room and slid down the wall to sit on the floor next to Paul. There was something fun and gravity-affirming about being on the floor. Jjaks was still sitting on the bed and looking slightly dazed; Conor had grabbed the room's only chair and was rocking slightly to and fro.

"So... what are we supposed to do now?" Jjaks asked. "Don't we have to try to get out or something?"

"Yeah," Conor said bitterly. "Try."

Alex decided that this was not the moment for a Star Wars joke.

"Ten blocks," Conor said, letting his chair fall back on all four of its legs and holding out his palms to illustrate the number. "Eleven blocks... I don't know, and they're all connected, but... People've been trying to get out, I mean, there's... Jack and his ice-pick and that FBI kid who followed him. And other people must've... must have had the same idea, but there's been nothing and-"

"-and if they planned to keep us here they'd know that we would try to escape," Jjaks said.

"Yeah," Conor said.

"That's what they said in the notice," Alex pointed out. "There's no way out, so don't even try."

"It's just psychological," Conor said. "If we believe there's no way out we wouldn't try too hard to find one. Even if there is."

The escape party tried the other sides of the building and tried breaking out through the top.

There was nothing there either.

Just the void, the wide expanse of dark nothingness stretching everywhere as far as they could see.

They were screwed.

"So much for that, huh?" Griffin asked, leaving his vantage point against a wall and falling in step with Jack as the escape party gave up and broke up.

"Why are you still here?" Jack asked without looking at him.

"There isn't really anywhere else for me to go, Jack."

"Then stay on the fourth floor." Jack turned a sharp right into the next corridor.

"But that's no fun."

"So you're going to give up just like that?" asked Johnny Utah, joining them and looking pointedly at Jack.

Jack wished that people would just leave him alone.

"If you've got a better idea, let's hear it," he said, entering the stairwell and starting the 50+ floor descent, because he wasn't in the mood to be stuck in a lift with the other two.

"Okay," Jjaks said. "So-"

The door opened. John Constantine looked in and stared at them. "What are you all doing in here?" he asked.

"Feeling sorry for ourselves," Conor said. "Go away."

The sound of the stairwell door opening temporarily drew John's attention from them.

"...Looks like you've got company," he said, then left them and went off to ignore the new arrival and bug Julian Mercer with his smoking. Julian's door was locked. John settled for blowing smoke through the gap between the door and the wall.

The new arrival stared at John as he made his way down the corridor and stopped by the open door.

He stared at the group inside, registering faces and the fact that Conor's chair looked about to topple over and send him face first to the ground.

"Hi," Conor said from his precarious wobbly perch on two chair legs. "Care to join us?"

A half-smile, nervous. "...What is this? Who-"

"The life's work of some actor whose name we can't pronounce," Conor suggested in interruption. "Join the club. There's space on the floor, you can sit there if you- $#%!"

Conor frantically grabbed hold of the bunk bed ladder to stop his fall and righted his chair.

Paul pretended not to laugh and attempted to look very interested in a section of carpet.

"Uh, yeah," Conor said, trying to look as though that had been completely intentional.

Jjaks stood up and held out his hand to the newcomer. "Jjaks Clayton."

The other met his hand in a firm handshake. "Shane Falco."

"Welcome to the family," Conor said from his chair. "D'you have any escape plans?"

"What's the deal here?" Shane asked, looking the group over and wondering why Alex and Paul were sitting on the floor.

"What do you mean?" Alex asked.

"Us... this place..."

"What does it look like?" Conor asked.

Shane shrugged. He gave up talking and sat down on the floor. The tiny room was getting cramped, but no one could be bothered to move to the far larger common room. It felt more private in here; and in fact it was, because the folks behind Kenselton had not installed cameras in the bedrooms based on the assumption that the only thing anyone would be doing in there would be to sleep, and no one other than people with sleep fetishes were interested in watching that.

"Okay," Conor continued. "Situation rundown: evil... scientific corporation teleports a whole lot of people from... other, uh, places over here. Where we apparently don't exist. But they don't exist where I come from either, so I guess we're even. Then they assign us to floors based on the actors who played us. And they tell us to behave ourselves and not try to escape."

"Just like we're doing now," Paul said.

"Shut up," Conor said.

"You're not even going to try and get out?" Shane asked.

"I don't think we can," Jjaks said.

"Yeah, but if you don't try-"

"There are people trying," Alex said.

"Lots of people," Conor agreed. "Many of them more powerful than us because they have... like, special powers. So if Superman can't get out, what makes you think we can?"

"What kind of attitude is that?" Shane asked. "We're trapped in some building; we can't just sit around and do nothing! Why should-"

The door opened. Jack stood there and looked at them. "What are you all doing in here?" he asked.

"Nothing," Conor replied. "How's the floor hacking going?"

Jack shook his head. "There's nothing out there," he said, coming in and closing the door behind him. "Not through the floors, or walls, or roof-"

"Nothing?" Alex asked.

"Yeah. It's all some... really huge empty space. We're not standing on anything or hanging from anything. We're just floating in darkness."

"How can that be?" Jjaks asked.

"How can any of this be?" Jack asked, looking at him.

"So we're stuck here forever," Conor concluded. "Right. I can deal with that." He got off his chair. "No more worrying about where the next meal is coming from or if I'll get killed tomorrow."

"You could," Jack pointed out. "Remember what Neo said about what this place is for? Some people might pay to kill us. For fun."

Conor pondered this, then shrugged. "Still beats real life. Here they actually have to pay. Lunch?"

"But we could use that," Shane said, jumping to his feet. "If other people are going to meet us, that means that either they'll have to come here, and leave, or we'll get to leave. Which means that there is a way out, and if they come here we might have a chance to follow them back..."

"Great!" Conor said with mock enthusiasm. "We'll do that. When they come here. But they're not here now, are they?"

"Well..."

Conor headed towards the door. "Lunch."

"So there's nothing we can do but wait," Jjaks said.

"Story of my life," Alex said.

Alex extracted the three teenagers from the common room with varying degrees of ease. Eddie had been moping at a table behind a shelf but willingly joined the others; Jesse and Ted were still engrossed in some inane cartoon on TV and claimed that they weren't hungry and were fine with subsisting mainly off potato chips, so Alex let them be.

Alex knocked on Julian's door. "Julian?"

The door opened.

"The rest of us are going for lunch," Alex said. "Wanna join us?"

Julian hesitated, then nodded agreement and left his room.

"Was anything burning?" he asked.

"Not that I know of; why?"

"I thought I smelt smoke just now. Weird."

Neo was apparently in the middle of some important computer stuff and wouldn't join them, so the eight of them went on to the cafeteria without him, passing John Constantine on his way back. He gave them a brief, dispassionate glance and continued on to some other part of the hotel – either the bar or some other fun place like that.

Johnny Utah and Griffin were already at the cafeteria, sharing a table but adamantly refusing to talk to each other. The others got their food and joined them, filling up the rest of the seats and a second table.

Griffin smiled at Jack. Jack glared at him and attacked his chicken with undue force.

On the other side of the cafeteria there was some minor commotion going on near the food counter; an attacked chef lay broken on the ground in front of the counter, fizzing slightly and giving off electric sparks. Nearby people were yelling at each other in angry-sounding ways. Nothing major. Everyone else continued eating.

"So what were the rest of you doing while Jack and I were trying to get out?" Johnny asked.

Jack looked up from his food and stared at Johnny. "You didn't do anything," he pointed out.

"That's only because you wouldn't let me."

"That's only because you dropped my ice pick into the hole."

"It was an accident!"

Jack snorted and returned to his food. "That's what you said when you offed my stress ball."

"...What were we doing?" Conor interrupted with sarcastic rhetoric.

"Nothing much," Jjaks said.

"That could be our tactic," Shane suggested. "They expect us to try and escape. So if we just sit around and do nothing-"

"-we'll have the element of surprise?" Alex asked.

Paul sighed.

"Our best bet is still to wait," Conor said. "They said they're opening up this place to the public in, what, a week? If there's going to be any chance of getting out, it'll be when people are constantly moving in and out of this place.

"A week?" Johnny protested. "You're going to be wiling prisoners for a week?"

"I don't think we have a choice," Jjaks said.

"You're all crazy," Johnny said, shaking his head.

"...and you're young, dumb and full of cum," Griffin murmured.

"We want to get out as much as you do," Shane said. "It's just that it might not be possible. Jack's told us where we are. We're floating in some void surrounded by nothing."

"Yeah," Jack said.

"...and if whoever built this place went to all that trouble to put us here, I don't think we're gonna be able to get out so easily. Face it: we don't even know where to escape to. If we want to get home – which I think we all do – then bashing through floors isn't going to get us there.

Paul looked sadly at his broccoli. Then he ate it.

"We've got to get back the same way we got here," Alex said. "Use the same kind of mechanism."

"How?" Julian asked.

"I don't know."

Griffin finished eating; he got up and patted Jack on the shoulder as he left. "See you later, Jack."

Jack jerked away from his touch and glared at him. Griffin smiled and went off.

"...What's up with you two?" Shane asked.

Jack stabbed his potato. "Nothing."

"Yeah, right," Johnny said.

"Shut up."

They wandered back into the common room after lunch. Alex declared that Jesse and Ted had had enough TV and if they could get off the sofa please. Ted went off next door to bug Neo; Jesse sat down on the floor and looked TV-deprived.

"So now we wait?" Jjaks asked.

Conor found a pack of cards lying on one of the shelves. He picked it up and gazed thoughtfully at it.

He looked up at the others. "How much money do you all have with you?"

"Why?" Shane asked.

Conor held up the pack of cards. "Poker. Who's in?"

Some wanted to be alone and took a room for themselves that night. Others took comfort in being around others in the same situation as them; and in a strange new universe full of unknown threats, it was always good to have company.

Alex looked up as the door opened and Paul peeked in.

"Mind if I bunk in here?"

"Go ahead."

"Thanks."

The night turned to morning and another day passed. New people arrived on the fourth floor, and they all took it in different ways. Some – notably a certain dentist named Perry Lyman – seemed completely fine with everything and acted as though this sort of thing happened every day; a couple or so did not stay for introductions, turning pale upon first contact and stumbling out of the corridor only to be discovered hours later majorly drunk at Kenselton Hotel's most excellent bar, by which time they had more or less been rendered incapable of protesting when floormates helped them back to the fourth.

Tommy Wernicke and Jesse Walker hit it off instantly and the two teens ran off somewhere, returning some time later lugging a crate of rum and looking slightly more bruised than they had been before the expedition.

Matt had not said anything; he had found a room and gone to lie down on the bed thinking about life; hours later his roommate Shane ran into the common room asking for help because Matt did not look completely healthy. "I'm a doctor," Julian had said, a statement that he was to very much regret for the rest of his time at Kenselton Hotel. The teen was running a high fever; it could have been the shock, it could have been something else, either way too sick to even open his eyes when Julian placed a cool hand on his head to gauge his temperature.

There were two bathrooms on the fourth floor. Each held various toiletries, including a single toothbrush.

Tommy and Jesse accidentally set one of those toothbrushes on fire while experimenting with John Constantine's cigarette lighter when he wasn't looking.

That left one toothbrush for the whole of the fourth floor.

The voice came out of the dark from below. "Do you know what Hell is like?"

Tommy rolled uneasily over in bed and clutched at his pillow as the asker answered his own rhetorical question.

He did not like John Constantine's idea of bedtime conversation.

He wanted a different roommate.

sideways from eternity

The Not-Particularly-Excellent Adventures of the Keanu-Spawn

Written by Anakin McFly

The Not-Particularly-Excellent
Adventures of the Keanu-Spawn

Chapter 3 »