Quoted By:
It is very odd that this place is so <span class="mu-r">RED.</span> Very odd. The elevator voice said you may find it 'strange and unexpected,' which is true, but doesn't seem to encompass the issue. It's not even that your surroundings are the color red, though they largely are. It's that their redness is the only definite thing you can grasp. Everything else— temperature, texture, consistency, hardness, wetness, weight— all of these things are indiscernible to you, or otherwise fluctuate at random, or coexist paradoxically. You feel as though you are edging up against a mystery. You are remembering a little bit about a water glass and a pill.
Yes. Something is very definitely wrong here. (You are crumpled into a 'thinking' pose.) Your own mind might be largely unknown to you, but you have a fuzzy sense it should at least be effable. You are not so complicated of a person. You don't even particularly like the color red. This <span class="mu-r">RED</span>ness, then, is not... yours?
What is it doing inside you, then?
Why has it <span class="mu-i">replaced</span> the inside of you? It has choked it wall to wall. There is nothing of you that isn't of it— not even yourself. It has been sending suckers all down and through your body. It is beating your heart.
You don't understand. How could you not have noticed any of this? How long has this been here? It is creeping over your skin like fungus. How long have you been living your life like— how long has this <span class="mu-r">RED</span>ness been living your life for you? How long has it been <span class="mu-i">making decisions?</span>
As promised you feel dread and apprehension and as promised you feel secure and comfortable and safe, safe, safe, safe, all coexisting paradoxically— because you are <span class="mu-r">RED</span> too and have been for some time, have been since before the elevator. Something slipped into you for reasons you are unable to comprehend. It can't be your fault. You can't think of any reason for it to be your fault. You are simply having a bad day.
At this point there is nothing really left of you but a dry husk and a wisp of cognition. There is nothing that could be done for you. You were not supposed to have known. Your last small human thoughts were allowed to dwindle before your mind was seized fully—
—is being seized fully, will be seized fully—
—and <span class="mu-r">you</span> comprehended at last what it was that would, from your future (your past, your present), return here— what it was that would take itself and pile itself, layer by impossible layer, into you, so for a moment it could have a bad day. It could have a day. It did not mean malice. But now that <span class="mu-r">you</span> are here it appreciates the company, and it wants to, it will have, it is showing you the world.
(2/3)
