The travelling agency is located in Jacobsburg. You could say that it's in the heart of New Bork City, but it really isn't. Outskirts would probably be a more fitting description.
It has a big, gray entrance door made exclusively out of thick, vertical bars placed one next to the other, with a keyhole attached to one of the bars. It didn't really work, you could just push to enter. Its only purpose was to make the bars actually resemble a door.
After you manage to get past the gate, which is deceptively hard since there is no "push" or "pull" sign, you end up in a large open area. The ground is covered by concrete and there are a few benches and a few trees, less than the benches amount of "a few".
Looking ahead, you can finally see it. A huge building staring right at you, more wide than it is tall and with more rooms and windows than a bunny has children. It was made of stone. Or at least it looked like it. With another huge entrance, although not as big this time, not as gray and not as depressing. Big ten-foot-tall doors that both opened inward, green in color and with beautiful, golden handles made of wood but painted in the appropriate color. Whoever built this surely made a big deal out of entering and exiting places.
Finally, looking up, you could see a big - no - enormous sign with big, handwritten cursive letters. Elegant, classy, feeling like it came straight out of the Victorian era.
The sign wrote "Fourth Middle School of New Bork City". But a pink line made of graffiti spray had crossed out the sign. On top of it, someone wrote "New Bork Travelling Agency" moving upwards diagonally.
"Are you going to stand there for long?" asked a stranger who saw Thaught standing there, staring at the agency, while he was on his way to get a cup of coffee and found her still standing there after he came back.
"Is there a problem if I do?" answered Thaught in a way that you could tell she was ready to fight for the right to stay still for as long as she wishes.
yeah. You are kind of sitting on my car and I have to go."
Thaught apologized and got up while the stranger got in his car and drove away in an unnecessarily fast fashion; caffeine does that to you sometimes.
"I guess I should be going in too," she mumbled to herself and pushed the front door open, after she failed pulling it.
And in she was. The office was on the fourth floor, and she was ready to finally start her new career. There was but one problem remaining.
stairs
Thaught could not understand why people were so obsessed with them. She could not find any valid reason other than the people in charge of designing buildings secretly being a bunch of sadists.
Or maybe this was the real final interview. A lot of companies care about their people being able to problem-solve and come out with solutions outside of the box. Maybe she needed to reach the fourth floor without using the stairs at all. That was the true test.
Thankfully, there was an elevator that you could use instead. If you were a fool! Using it would obviously mean instant elimination; it was a bait. The elevator itself was slightly elevated, and you needed to walk up a singular stair in order to get in. The agency's final interview was very elaborate and apparently was thought out before the building was even built. It was definitely not an honest mistake Rob the builder made during construction because it was his first gig ever.
Her choices were limited and her time even more so. She did what every person would do in her place: she climbed up to the fourth floor from the outside of the building.
This was a tough task, and the fact that she needed to keep the box of donuts intact made this even harder. She needed both her hands to climb successfully up the building, so she bit the box of donuts hard enough to hold it with her teeth and raw jaw strength, but not so hard that it would make a dent in the box. Her background proved she was capable of such a feat as she consistently and reliably came victorious over the battle with every jawbreaker candy she ever encountered. This should be a piece of cake. Or maybe a piece of dough because cake donuts are not real donuts.
One boring sequence of Thaught trying to find her footing and stop drooling on the donut box later, she ended up inside the fourth floor restroom. Success was so close she could practically smell it, along with other, less pleasant smells that are better left off without description. She habitually washed her hands and walked out of the restroom and into the hallway, with her chest up high and proud. At that point, another person happened to be passing by, who saw the way Thaught was carrying herself after coming out and thought to himself that whatever she left in there must have been a personal record.
The hallway was vast. It extended more than one would expect in both directions, you could almost not see the end. This was not an issue as the end itself was not particularly interesting; just a wall made out of concrete on both sides.
What was interesting was the carpet. It was brown with golden lines running across its sides and a lot of smaller, equally golden details knitted on it without a particular repeating pattern. Whoever made this carpet really cared about the end result and had way more free time than they should.
Not only that, but the details themselves were interesting. They were small knitted computers, DNA signs, phone booths and pistols, none of which are conventional carpet pattern material.
"Interesting," Thaught murmured. "Why would a travel agency have such a carpet?" She said and touched it to check if it was bas relief. She was relieved when she found out it indeed was.
"All I need is to find the office now," she said and checked the map, which was conveniently hanged on the wall on her right, exactly next to her.
"It says that I am here." She placed her finger on a red dot on the map representing her position. "But how do they know that? It must be those darn cellphones. They know everything about us nowadays. Anyway, it seems that I need to go to math class."
The map was there ever since the building was still a school and rooms were still split mostly by subject. Making a new map would be inefficient, irresponsible, and irrational, so they instead drew a faint line with a pencil over the subject and wrote on top of it what the current room was used for.
Math class was now the travelling agency, history class was replaced by a famous law firm and religious education had become a 'science lab dedicated to proving that God is not real', which took three lines of text on the map, but they really needed to make a point. The school cafeteria was now the work cafeteria.
Thaught memorized the route she needed to take in order to get to math class, took her finger off the map and started walking. A few steps and a couple of minutes later, she saw a sign hanging from the ceiling, saying "Math class is NOT this way."
"Whoops, wrong way." She turned around and started walking again. As she was going, she noticed that there were a lot of signs specifically to help you find the class of math. It was either some kind of magical moving class or the people in the travel agency needed all the help they could get.
After a few minutes and a lot of help from the signs, she found the class. She could hear talking from the other side. People had arrived before her, which was good. It would be really awkward being the first person in the office on your first day. The door was closed, painted in a brown color different from the carpet's brown and a golden handle different from the carpet's golden. The 'math class' sign was crossed out. Someone had painted blue flames engulfing it and 'Travelling Agency' was written above it in what seemed like the edgiest font possible.
*Knock* *knock*
It was her first day at work and she did not know what was considered normal and what was not in that workplace, so she aired on the side of politeness and knocked on the door instead of going straight in.
A few minutes passed with no answer on the door.
*Knock* *knock* *knock*
But still nothing. With every moment passing, she could feel her annoyance growing. She needed to remain calm, yes, losing her temper on her first minute in her new job would not make for the best of first impressions. She would be okay, she would wait for as long as it was needed. She would remain calm.
Thaught then kicked the door straight open and barged into the class, panting and with her right eye twitching like she was overdosed on caffeine.