Disclaimer: Anything you recognize – be it character, location, idea or line – belongs to others; I may be playing with them but I make no profit from this.
Last time on Let the Games Begin
Grinning hugely, they hauled themselves up in front of the last set of doors.
The five of them stood rooted on the doorstep, awed by the suggestive sight offered by the vast room the Corridor had led them to.
The floor was a smooth expanse of water, spread like a glass pane in all directions, which mirrored the surroundings with the barest of flickers.
On it, a vast granite slab, long and rectangular, floated as if by magic, its foundations hidden so perfectly by the water it looked for all appearances suspended on the lake like a still raft.
There was a graceful pier that connected the even quay where they stood to the closest edge of the apparently floating platform, seamlessly morphing into a long processional way once on the slab.
It lead to a stone-built enclosure wall, on the way passing through three tall, insulated gateways, well-spaced – Terry estimated that there might be twenty paces between the first and second gateway – and beautiful in the perfect symmetry of their stone pylons and the delicacy of their projecting cornices.
All was peaceful, not even the slightest breeze stirring the calm harmony of the site.
Terry felt like sitting cross-legged by the water and just let time roll by: the gracefulness of the aesthetical building reflected in the water invited contemplation and meditation and made him feel as if the place was suspended out of time.
It was the most evocative location he had ever seen.
They stepped on the pier quietly and instinctively walked in a line, almost feeling as if they should mimic the processions they had no doubt the place had been imagined for.
They approached the gateways slowly, awed by the high, precise architecture; one after the other, they passed under the tall granite gateways, almost reverentially, taking in the perfectly cut stones and glancing at the beautifully unsettling effect of the reflection on the water surface, as smooth as oil and as clear as a mirror.
The walls seemed to be quite bare: there was none of the bas-reliefs, frescos or hieroglyphics Terry would have expected. There were also no sculptures of any kind.
Everything was well-defined, minimalist, essential: the few colours, the suffuse lightning that reduced shadows to a minimum, the vast space with barely any items, be they decorations or furniture, all seemed designed to achieve efficiency and simplicity.
In front of the enclosure wall that Terry guessed hid the temple proper, there were four isolated columns, just as neat and smooth as the rest of the architecture around them.
Among the columns was set up a working desk: a good-sized glass top articulated in an L shape, a comfortable-looking swivelling chair, a polished metal filing cabinet and a chest of drawers for storage that appeared to fit under the desk top as if they were made for just that purpose. Everything on it was flawlessly organized and even at a glance, Terry could see it was all state-of-the-art, top-line equipment, down to the pencils in a minimalist pen holder.
Above the desk Terry recognized a huge monitor and an assortment of perfectly arranged electronic devices he could not truly identify, but where apparently plugged in the amazing-looking laptop holding pride of place over the entire station, including what looked like a round movie-projector steadily blinking a red laser light in a slow spinning pattern.
On the whole it looked extremely efficient, extremely modern and most of all, extremely out of place in the frame of huge granite architecture; though perhaps not as much as the man sitting behind it, expertly typing on the keyboard…