>>5976473Continuing to the next floor, you encounter Matsukov, who is returning to the ground floor – he reports he has not found anything that looks like a radio; you instruct him to stand guard at the entrance while you conduct your own search. The third floor landing opens directly onto a room with a wide double-door and a large desk. A wheeled stand with an overhead projector is parked in a corner of the room. Expecting some chairs along the edge of the table and the perimeter of the room, it is bare.
The rest of the floor is divided up into offices, each has someone’s name written out front, but without their title. Each office has a single desk and multiple filing cabinets overflowing with paper. The first door on the right leads into another filing room, this one without windows and, accordingly, difficult to clearly perceive. From what you can make out, it is packed, possibly even more than the one at the courthouse. At the end of the hallway, two corridors split off, one leading into a large bathroom that also functions as a storage space for cleaning supplies, and the other into a large office: the sign outside the door reads “Ernest Fishborne” and has his title “District Director of Education”. This office is larger than the others, although not lavishly furnished like the governor’s. It has a large desk, which still manages to be covered with paper, and bookshelves against most of the walls, which are filled with a mixture of books and plastic-bound sheaths of papers. Gaps in the wall have pictures of Republian leadership and illustrations of prominent historical figures. In the far wall is a large window with a pleasant view of the courtyard garden below and, in the right-hand corner, is a large color TV set resting on a wooden cabinet. Inside the cabinet is a VHS machine, several video cassette tapes, and another electronic device with the manufacturer’s mark “Nintendo” – you don’t know the device or the manufacturer, but, considering the articles surrounding it, it seems likely that it is an entertainment device.
The stairs stop at the fourth floor, which you quickly discover is a maze of offices and hallways. Of the dozen doors, only two are labeled: one in the back as “Filing” and one at the very front of the building, only accessible through a closed-off hallway, as “District Tax Administrator”. Adding to the labyrinthine nature of the floor layout is the fact that each of the smaller offices is nearly identical; all have one or two desks, several filing cabinets, and are crammed with paper, especially green or yellow-tinted worksheets. The documents you can see have almost no writing, only tightly-spaced columns and rows of numbers. The district administrator’s office has natural light from a window, significantly less paper, and a phone on the desk, but is otherwise unremarkably similar to those of his staff.