“I walked through that office ten minutes ago. It was empty. Now there’s a chair turned toward the door, and I didn’t hear a thing.”
Chairs that fill themselves are one of the most talked-about traits among wanderers and one of the least explained. A room you have already walked through, that you remember as empty, suddenly has an occupied chair. Nobody is visible and nothing is heard, and the chair is there, with its back to you.
When it happens
The archive has been able to pin down the conditions fairly precisely:
- The room has to be one you have already visited. Chairs do not fill in zones you haven’t walked.
- You have to be 24 meters or more from the chair and out of direct sight. It never happens in front of you.
- The Pulse has to be in calm or rest. During stalking and the peak, the chairs are still.
- It only affects some of the chairs in Level 0, about thirty in every thousand. The rest do not move.
- Nothing happens right after you arrive, because you need to have been on the level for a while.
Once occupied, the chair stays that way. It never empties again, not even if you walk away and come back.
How to recognize them
An occupied chair looks like any other office chair, but turned, with its back to the corridor, the seat pressed down and sometimes pulled a little away from the desk. The signs and office fixtures around it do not change. The only difference is that you no longer remember it that way.
How to survive
- There is nothing to be done against an occupied chair. What matters is what it implies. Your rhythm is calm or rest, and the Pulse is saving something for later.
- If you see several in one stretch, take the chance to stabilize and rest, but leave a clear way out.
- Don’t stand there staring at one. None fills in front of anyone.
What people say
- Passing close along the opposite wall, you can feel the seated chairs.
- In some accounts it is said that a gaze has weight and that the chair fills the exact instant you stop looking at it.
- On who sits down, accounts don’t agree. Some swear it is a low shadow, and some say the chair simply remembers someone.
An echo of the same thing is seen in the absurd furniture, which turns up in impossible places. And the rhythm of calm that favors it is explained in The Phases of the Pulse.