The meeting ends, and you return to your office, several floors up, to catch up with the work that's been piling up during your vacation.
Next
As you approach the middle of September, you find yourself working late one evening. The screen of your laptop is rapidly becoming a blur that makes your eyes ache. For a few seconds you lean back in your chair, and close your eyes.
When you open them again, you are elsewhere. You are standing, naked, in a natural tunnel of some kind, lit by a dozen or so bright fireflies that flit around you and crawl on the tunnel's walls. The tunnel branches into several different directions in front and behind you. The whole area has a blurry, indistinct feeling to it. Perhaps it is a tunnel of the mind, rather than of rock. A dream, maybe?
No. Though indistinct, the feel of this place is unlike any dream you remember. It is perhaps both real and unreal; as a sudden breeze makes you shiver, you wonder what will happen to you should you be injured, or die, in this place.
And then a voice resounds through the tunnels around you. Both gentle and firm; you cannot spot its source. "My name is Salem Masfiwi. Welcome to this construct."
"A construct?" you call out. "What do you mean?"
But no answer comes. Then a rumbling, grinding noise sounds behind you, and you turn to see one of the tunnel branches closing.
Hmm. The walls here can move.