On the ninety-ninth floor of the towering Omni-Corp skyscraper, the air wasn't just pure oxygen; it was a suffocating mix of burnt ink smell, cold coffee, and the breaths of thousands of employees trapped inside narrow glass boxes. The noise there was monotonous and boring, an electromagnetic hum like a sick beehive, where no one speaks, only the sounds of fast and continuous clicking on keyboards that sounded like the footsteps of an army of crawling metal ants.
Arthur Kaito was sitting behind his desk number four hundred and two, and his desk was nothing but a tiny space of pale gray plastic, with endless digital files piled on top of it. His hand was shaking over the keyboard, not from tiredness, but from a deep disgust that had seeped into his soul. He looked at the reflection of his face in the cold blue screen; he looked like a panting ghost, with sunken eyes surrounded by heavy black circles, and pale skin that hadn't touched the sun's threads for long months.
Arthur wasn't writing those boring economic reports required from him, instead he was watching the digital clock in the screen corner with burning eyes. The seconds were passing with a killing slowness, as if they were drops of melted lead falling into a thin glass bowl. He whispered to himself in a hoarse voice that could barely be heard:
"Three.. two.. one.. now."
Suddenly, and with a sudden movement that broke the killing routine of the floor, Arthur pushed his chair back with huge force. The wheels made a sharp and annoying screech that pierced the silence, making dozens of pale heads turn toward him with a chilling mechanical way. The neighbor employee, Miller, who spent twenty years in the next desk, looked at him and asked in a lifeless voice:
"Arthur? Is there a problem in the system? Go back to work immediately, the manager is watching us from camera three."
Arthur looked at him with eyes burning with a strange spark, and clenched his fist until the blue veins appeared. Without any warning, he punched the screen in front of him with all the spite that accumulated in his heart during years of slavery. The screen exploded and the pieces of strengthened glass scattered as if they were broken stars, and the black liquid leaked from the heart of the device staining his papers and hands. Arthur shouted a loud scream that shook the corners of the ninety-ninth floor:
"Enough! I am not a machine in your dirty factory! I am not just a number in your cursed statistics!"
He didn't stop at this point, but jumped lightly over the desk and started running over the rows of lined-up devices, his heavy shoes crushing the screens with calculated hits, and with every smash, blue electric sparks and a sharp ozone smell were released. The alarm sirens went off suddenly, and red lights started rotating in the ceilings, turning the place into a nightmare theater. Mr. Vance, the floor manager, shouted from his high platform while waving his files with anger:
"You crazy! What are you doing with our property? The guards are on their way to you! You will rot in life prison, I will make sure you won't see the light again!"
Arthur stopped over the desk of one of the shocked colleagues, and turned toward the manager while madness was shining in his eyes like diamond glow, and said with a hysterical laugh:
"The prison is this floor, you idiot! The prison is these chairs and this recycled air! I am just now.. starting to be free!"
The metal hydraulic doors opened with a violent sound, and six guards came out wearing matte black technological armor, their helmets reflecting the red lights. They were carrying advanced laser rifles, and red dots aimed accurately appeared on Arthur's chest. The guards' leader gave a firm order through the speaker:
"Freeze in your place, Kaito! Put your hands behind your head! Any extra movement and we will empty the laser charges in your body!"
Arthur didn't wait, but jumped toward the emergency door and rushed toward the spiral stairs that seemed to go down to infinity. His breaths were coming out burning, and the sounds of the guards' heavy feet behind him were approaching with a scary metal echo. One of the guards fired a laser beam that passed right beside his ear until he felt the heat melting some of his hair strands.
Arthur reached floor 100, pushed an old wooden door groaning under the weight of years, and entered a narrow room then closed the iron latch quickly. He threw his back against the door trying to catch his breaths that became like knives in his chest, while hearing the guards' violent hits from outside. The leader called from behind the door with an angry voice:
"No escape for you, Kaito! Surrender yourself and we will consider you a mental patient who needs treatment, otherwise we will burn the door and whoever is behind it!"
Arthur laughed hysterically, covered his face with his hands dirty with ink and blood, and whispered to himself in the middle of his tears:
"Scared? Yes, I am terrified to the bone. But am I regretful? No.. and I will never be. Death outside is easier than life here."
He turned to examine the room, and found nothing but a strange window in the far corner pulsing with a brilliant emerald light washing the dirty room walls. He approached it with wonder, and saw through it a world that doesn't belong to Earth; giant trees exceeding the clouds, leaves glowing with amazing colors, and clear lake waters flying in the air as if they were balls of liquid diamonds.
Suddenly, a huge silver fish passed swimming in the sky with complete quietness. The rope of his wonder was cut by a sharp buzzing sound; the guards had started using the thermal laser cutter, and a burning red line appeared in the middle of the iron door as the metal started melting and falling like lava. Arthur looked at the window, then at the door that was about to fall, and shouted with his loudest voice:
"I will jump! Any other world will be more merciful than your dead faces! I will go to where a real green color exists!"
Arthur climbed the window edge, and threw himself with all his weight into that green light. In the moment the iron door fell broken and the guards entered, they found no one. The room was completely empty, and the window was nothing but a deaf and cold concrete wall, as if that magic gate never existed except as an escape way for a soul that refused the chains. Outside the limits of their dark company, Arthur was falling in the sky of a totally new world, where there is no technology, no reports, and no managers.. only the smell of dewy grass under a sun that never sets.