Chapter ᘔ: Upper Floors

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“Chapter upside-down two?” asked Toaster-Man.

“It means ten in base twelve,” I explained.

“Right, cause you always have to be different,” Toaster-Man said.

“It's a superior number system!” I protested. “Anyway you're not supposed to be able to see them!” Toaster-Man ignored me, and continued running upstairs along with everyone else. They passed the balcony of the restaurant/nightclub that was the first floor and onto the second floor, which was, as the band had already seen, a music store with dozens of instruments, as well as a rehearsal/recording studio.

“Wait, we could have taken the elevator and beaten everyone,” said Benny.

“I tried that earlier,” said Nathan. “It wouldn't come. The button has been lit up for hours.”

The crowd of people continued rushing up the stairs, to the next floor. It seemed to be a lobby of some kind, with a desk and a hallway with numbered doors, presumably leading to other rooms. But no one was interested in exploring there at the moment, as they were too busy trying to get to one that hadn't been seen yet.

As the fourth floor was approached, there came a peircing shriek from Allison, who happened to be the in the lead at the moment. As the others caught up they saw that she was face-to face with an uncannily lifelike mannequin. In fact, the entire floor was full of them. Both sexes, all shapes and body types, all of them lifeless. The room was full of them, easily hundreds. Other than that, it was blank and white, completely void of decoration. It was, needless to say, an erie sight.

They kept going, up to the fifth floor, but everyone stopped there, as there stairs further up were blocked by a locked gate. On this floor was a store filled with various kink-knacks and random items, food, and other such things, basically a convenience store, or a groccery store, or a dollar store, or some combination of those things. The room was semi-circular, divided by a wall down the middle of the tower, with a door on the far end of it.

“WHY ARE THE STAIRS LOCKED?” shouted Allison, somewhat frustrated that she wouldn't be able to make up her own floor.

“Because we made it that way,” said Bethany. “When we went exploring and realized what an undefined floor meant. We decided it was best to block off the rest of them until we all decided what to do with them.”

“And what, exactly, does an undefined floor mean?” asked Kristina.

“Well basically the majority of floors of the Leaning Tower of Pizza exist in a state of quantum flux,” said Richard. Damn I should have called it the DN Tower, that would have been much better. Oh well, too late now. “Other than floors one thru five, the rest of them undefined, and much like Schrödinger's cat, the state of what's inside them is indeterminate. The first one to observe a floor collapses the waveform, and it seems what exists on said floor is determined by the thoughts of that observer. Dan made the first floor, but it seems like we can make the rest. We had a suspicion when we went upstairs to find exactly what we needed to start Silverfish, and it was confirmed when Michael wanted a nap, went upstairs expecting a hotel, and found exactly that.”

“Then what's the deal with the creepy mannequin guys on floor four?” asked Toaster-Man.

“Oh, that was an experiment,” answered Richard.

Everyone seemed even more confused by that answer.

“You see, we wanted to see if we could create life,” said Richard.

“Turns out you can't,” said Anthony.

<Ah,> said Pudding. <Because the existence of sentient beings would have collapsed the waveform earlier, creating a temporal paradox if they had been there all along.>

“Exactly,” said Richard. “That's what we figured.”

“Makes perfect sense,” Toaster-Man said sarcastically.

“Anyway,” said Jeffery. “It was all very sensible of you to lock up the stairs here, but you shouldn't have been wasting floors on experiments. Besides, what if it had worked?”

“Then Danada would have more people,” said Kimberly. “We'll probably get sick of each other soon with just twenty-four of us.”

The conversation dissolved into a few simultaneous ones, as conversations involving so many people are wont to do.

“Who has the key?” asked Georgina, loudly enough for everyone to hear, and surprising everyone, as she wasn't usually loud and hadn't, until this point, had many actual lines.

“We hid it,” said Michael. “We figured once we elect a president or prime minister or whatever they can choose what we do with the undefined floors, and we'll give it to them.”

“Well this certainly alters the campaign,” said Jeffery.

“Obviously we should give everyone their own floor to do what they want with,” said Nathan.

“Hang on,” said Jeffery. “Floors are our most precious resource. I think we should decide what to do with them communally and only use the ones we need.”

“When I am president, floors eight through twenty-four will be dedicated to the Ministry of Toast, which I'm sure everyone will agree is an important and necessary government function.” I'm not going to tell you who said that.

“What would you do Zan- wait where's Zandria?” asked 7ollion.

“She's not here,” said Jessica. “I just remembered, I saw her go to the elevator during the bridge of Silverfish's song. “She must have taken it up to an unknown floor!”

“That's right!” said Zandria, who had appeared on the other side of the gate just then. “Wow that was good timing! I literally just got down here. And what's with this gate and fence blocking the stairs?”

“We didn't want people to rush and define all the floors before we decided what to do with them!” said Tessa.

“Well that was kind of stupid of you considering there's an elevator,” said Zandria.

“So I suppose as leader of the anarchist party you'd just let everyone rush to define the floors.”

“Well I don't know about that,” said Zandria. “There's pleanty of floors to go around, we could each have like 4 with a bunch left over.”

Jeffery looked shocked. “I'm not a caricature, Jeffery,” Zandria said. “Although floor one-three is now Zandria's Floor – a tropical paradise park where everyone is welcome!”

<One-three> Asked Pudding. <Why didn't you say thirteen?>

“Oh, cause there's these weird floors as well, upside-down two and curvy E, I figured the number system is different.”

“Base twelve,” said Toaster-Man. “Dan has this weird fetish for it.”

“Wait, but if you came from floor... one-dozen three,” said Jeffery. “And took the stairs, wouldn't all the floors between be defined?” The atmosphere among the others became angry, as that would clearly be more floors than Zandria's share.

“I'm not stupid!” said Zandria. “I know you guys would all hate me if I did that! I closed my eyes when I went down the stairs. Anyway, it'd be nice if you could unlock this gate to let me back. We can keep it locked after that to stop people from going through until after the election when we decide what to do with the floors.”

“Why don't you just take the elevator?” asked Zach.

“Then people will be able to access it,” said Zandria. “I put a drinking bird I created as part of floor dozen-three on a table beside the elevator; it is pressing the button constantly so that the elevator won't move.”

“Okay, I'll go get the key,” said Michael. He ran down the stairs. Everyone spoke of this new development on the first floor for a while.

“Why is this room only half the floor?” said Megan. She was conversing with Anthony.

“Oh, that was another experiment. We wanted to see if you could keep part of a floor undefined. Turns out you can. There is another room that takes up a quarter of this floor filled with undefined boxes, and another quarter of the floor is completely undefined.”

“Undefined boxes?”

“Yeah, it's a mini-quantum flux in a box! They have question marks on the outside because I thought that would be appropriate. Of course, if you pick them up, you define their weight, but other than that they are entirely portable!”

“Okay, that's kind of awesome,” Megan admitted. “Only one more question. Why did you guys choose to tell us all this through song?”

“Oh, we thought it would be funny. Plus we needed lyrics for the bridge. After that the song pretty much wrote itself.”

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