Pretty soon I was already experiencing the effects. I hadn't been this high since I was sixteen on a dare. I had gone into one of the buildings downtown and climbed the stairs. It was the most terrifying thing that I had ever done. I didn't even make it forty stories up. At floor thirty seven, I had experienced a seizure and my friends had called the fire department. The police were called and my father had almost beat me to death. That was years ago. That was when Mom was institutionalized.
They still didn't have a name for all the things you experienced when you were this high up. I had read "The official story." How no one wanted to attempt a rescue at the International Space Station. They had let them all die. There was nothing to do. They said that JAXA had sent up probes in an attempt to capitalize on it, but it was lost. Little by little, NASA and the USAF were dismantled and shared among the Navy and the Army. It didn't matter really. Whether NASA went into the Sea like the rumors said or whether they just quit the program completely didn't affect the common man like me. Right now, I was stuck in an elevator that was humming.
The buttons, the walls and even my jacket, began to become fuzzy. I was almost at the top. I wonder if all the clothes fell off, or were you just blurry. I was having a hard time focusing on everything, how sometimes things become blurry and double-visioned. Like that, but without the mental instability. This is how a crazy person must feel. Trapped inside of a body that is doing things on its own, when the consciousness remains intact. Maybe… It would have to be a specific type of crazy I guess. It was beyond me. I wasn't a psychoanalyst.
The button dinged at the top floor and the door opened. It wasn't really what I was expecting, but then again, I had no expectations. Some of the same logos that were at the bottom floor had smeared their signs here and there. When I say smear, I mean it. Ink didn't work up here like it did on the ground. You could write deep, or into something… Similar to how you could not only impress the newstype into a ball of Silly Putty, but you could impress into it as well with grooves and gouges. The ink from the advertisements floated in mid-air like opulent cotton candy clouds. I walked right through them.
They were there - people I mean, walking around with garments that couldn't exist in real life. Larger than possible, colors that couldn't work. Angles that weren't supported by physics. And some of them were swimming through the air like it was water. I was hallucinating I decided, and dedicated my eyes to the floor and walked until I came to a wall, where I stopped, sat down, turned around and placed my back up against it.
I almost fell out of the building, and I would have if a hand hadn't grabbed me and pulled me back.
"Woah Nelly!" The voice said. It wasn't my brother, but a red-head with hair that was on fire. I wasn't alarmed by it, because it didn't appear to be real fire, but it was interesting to look at, nonetheless. I wanted to speak to her but all I could get out was a groan.
"Oh honey! Are you alright?" She offered me her hand to stand up. I waved her off and stayed on the floor. Not leaning on the wall, but not moving. I couldn't look up. The walls were waving like coral in the sea and it was very unnerving to say the least. I didn't know anyone and they didn't know me. Where was my brother when I needed him? The woman with the red hair hadn't left my side, instead she was looking at me with a cocked head. She squatted down and came eye to eye with me.
"Ohmygod, this is your first time, isn't it?" she asked, wide eyed. She knew it was, everyone knew it was, there was no hiding it. Definitely my first time for whatever this was. Going this high.
My brother never showed up. I eventually did stand up and hung out with Blackstar all night… That's what she said her name was. We talked, we danced and things got a little crazy when my twin showed up. Either Blackstar had slipped me something in my drink or it was just the way things were up here, but I sort of came to with my hands cuffed to a lamp post in the park. It still looked like we were on the top floor, but I couldn't be sure of anything anymore.
"No hard feelings man." he said. "I just wanted to meet you and I didn't think you'd be too keen on me coming down there. Not after what your mom did to my brother.