The world looked like it had been drawn on paper or like someone had taken magazine clippings and glued them down to create what she was looking at. What was even stranger were the odd characters walking around. They all looked so extremely different from each other. What was this place anyway?
Suddenly a ticket booth sprung up in front of her. It looked like something that might have been outside of a movie theater. The girl sitting behind the counter had wild black hair and a long, pointed nose that looked like it could pop a balloon if it got too close. She had her feet propped up and held a magazine close to her face in front a pair of reading glasses. Who did that remind her of…? The girl's other hand, she noticed, was drumming a set of midnight blue fingernails against the wood of the countertop. She waited patiently for the girl to notice her, but after a while with no response she started to get discouraged.
Maybe I can just go in, she thought and began to walk around the booth and into the city. But just as she was about to pass she seemed to hit some kind of invisible force field.
"Passport?" a bored voice drawled from behind the booth. Carefully, she tiptoed back and peered around the corner. She could see the girl's shoes now, one resting right on top of the other. "Passport…?" the voice repeated, drawing the word out lazily.
"I'm sorry…?" she said, not sure what else to do.
"You need a passport to get in," the voice replied absently.
"Oh." She looked down at herself. She too was dressed rather oddly, she observed. She was wearing a pink zip-up sweatshirt and some kind of black robe that made her look like a judge in a courthouse. But was there a passport anywhere on her? The girl in the booth started tapping her fingers again. She looked inside her robes. No pockets, no passport. She checked the pockets of her pants. No passport. Her fingers began to feel frantic and shook as she searched the depths of her sweatshirt's pockets. No passport.
The girl spoke then, suddenly pulling her from her growing pool of panic.
"If you give me your name, I can look you up." She then proceeded to pull a monitor and keyboard from under the counter. The girl had finally placed her magazine aside and had her midnight fingers poised over the keys.
"Right, my name…" My name… she thought, desperate to remember. What's my name?!
"If you know what story you're from, I can probably still find you in here." She looked up at the black haired girl again. What in the world was she talking about?
"A story…?" She thought harder, and the girl looked up at her from beneath her lashes. Her fingers were still hovering over the keyboard, and she was beginning to look impatient.
"You don't remember anything?"
Do I remember anything? She focused, searching the insides of her mind until her head hurt. The girl inside the booth sighed and reached underneath the counter again. This time she retrieved a telephone and proceeded to dial one. They both waited for a minute in a deafening silence. Finally, she frowned in an exasperated manner and hung up. She turned back to her computer and was about to take hold of the mouse when she appeared to remember something.
"Here," she said, "take a seat." The girl bent over once again and this time pulled out a metal folding chair and heaved it over the edge of the counter.
"Thank you," she grunted, taking it from the girl. It was difficult to unfold, she soon realized. Some of the joints could probably use a good oiling. The girl swiveled around to face the screen again and began clicking away madly.
"Ah, here it is," she smiled in triumph, after a moment of searching, and disappeared beneath the counter again. When the girl resurfaced, she was staggering under the weight of a clunky printer. She took the cord and plugged it into a UBS drive in the computer and the other machine roared to life. The girl glanced at the screen, clicked once more, and the printer started humming as it spit out a sheet of paper.
"There you are. Just fill out as much as you can and we'll try to get you placed." The black haired girl handed the document to her.
"I fill it out here?" she asked.
"That's right." The girl answered and picked her magazine back up. The girl was clearly expecting that she would be kept waiting.
She sat down in the metal chair and picked up a pen that was taped to a plastic spoon which was chained to the countertop. She centered the parchment in front of her and focused on the first blank.
"Name ___________________" it read. She skipped it and went to the next one.
"Book/Movie/Fairytale/Nursery Rhyme _____________________________" She skipped that one too.
"Are you the main character or supporting character? If main, list three supporting. If supporting, list main _____________________________________" This one was also left unanswered.
"List any awards your Book/Movie/Fairytale/Nursery Rhyme has received ___________" The rest of the assessment went on like this. It hadn't even been two minutes before she handed the paper back to the girl in the booth.
"Done already?" She took the document and stared at the written information, which was really only a physical description. "I see," she frowned. "Well this is going to make my job harder." She said it like a resignation. "If you'll just hold on a minute," the girl said, turning her back and bent down again.
What else can
possibly be down there? She wondered. The girl straightened up,
pulling a silver filing cabinet along with her. She opened the top
drawer and placed the assessment inside it.
"By the way,"
she said, turning around, "my name's Robin."
"Hello." She held out her hand to Robin, who took it only for a moment before dropping it. She turned around and disappeared through a door on the back wall. "Follow me," she heard Robin yell from behind the booth.
As she rounded the corner, she saw Robin holding a large key ring with one silver key on it.
"We'll need to go into The City to find out who you are," she said, turned the key in an invisible lock, and with a loud *clunk* the white world was washed away.