Signs and Ceiling Fixtures

Testimony

“Almost everything says something and almost nothing is any use. There are exit arrows, plaques with their numbers, a stopped calendar. It’s what’s left of the people, I guess.”

The signs and office furniture are the costume of Level 0. Nobody placed them to help you, and they are there because the place remembers having had people. Each piece says little and looks real. In time, the wanderer learns to read them the way one reads a map.

Signs

On the walls there are three kinds of sign that repeat.

Piece	Where you find it
Office plaque	at 1.60 m, beside the mouth of each room
Exit sign	at 2.20 m, at the far end of corridors
Cork bulletin board with a calendar	in rooms of 40 m² or more

The texts are cut off or repeated and never name a brand. An exit sign that leads nowhere is the most reliable clue that something strange is nearby (see Level 0.01: the exit?). The long texts and the graffiti live in Found Texts.

Furniture

Desk, chair, phone and notepad. This is what gives shape to a Level 0 that looks as if it had people in it an hour ago. The notepad usually has legible handwriting, but the phone never rings.

A cubicle up close: the office chair, turned toward the corridor

Desk with phone and notepad, as if its owner had just stood up

The ceiling

If you look up, the ceiling has its furniture too. Next to the ceiling lights there are smoke detectors and sprinklers. Almost one in five ceiling lights has a detector, and one in eight a sprinkler. They are small and can only be seen up close, as dark points stuck to the edge of the light.

The same room seen from the same position, without detectors or sprinklers

Cubicle ceiling with smoke detectors beside each ceiling light

Nobody knows what they are for in a place where nothing has ever burned. Even so, wanderers count them in passing so as not to lose the thread.

What is said

A note in the long corridor says the office plaques follow no order at all and that two neighboring rooms can carry the same number.
Some say they have seen a bulletin board with the calendar on an impossible day.
Of what the exit sign at the end of the longest corridor says, there are as many versions as there are mouths.

Case file images

Cubicle with a wooden desk, chair and partition

Mentioned in

L-001 · LevelsLevel 0: yellow officesEndless offices of damp carpet and humming fluorescents. Every wanderer wakes here, and nobody leaves by the way they came in.P-025 · PhenomenaDoors Locked by DefaultFew doors and almost all of them shut. They open by hand, slam closed and can be dismantled whole.O-020 · ObjectsDoor as an ObjectA closed door can be unscrewed and carried with both hands. Behind it stays an empty frame that tells you someone came through here.O-022 · ObjectsFound TextsNotes on the carpet, signs, graffiti and notices, what others left written before the corridor took them.O-009 · ObjectsWater DispenserAn office dispenser that seems to promise water. It is dry, and its silhouette beside a pillar is the most human thing in the room.O-007 · ObjectsOffice SignsPlaques, A4 sheets and wall lettering. An office that keeps to its routine long after the last person left to follow it.S-006 · SublevelsRow of OutletsAn empty wall with outlets in a row, every 45 centimeters, alternating baseboard height and desk height where there is no desk.O-003 · ObjectsSafety NoticesStandardized plaques with a pictogram and text, and always one part erased or wrong. They look genuine until the second read.S-016 · SublevelsFallen Ceiling TilesUnder every gap in the drop ceiling, a piece of tile on the carpet. Above, the gap was already there.S-022 · SublevelsThe Space Above the Drop CeilingAbove the ceiling tiles there is a low gap with room for ducts and, some say, something else. A hatch marks it.S-015 · SublevelsVery Long CorridorsEighty meters in a straight line, a door every three point six, and an exit sign at the far end that never gets closer.P-006 · PhenomenaChairs That Fill ThemselvesYou go back to an empty room and someone is sitting there. Some chairs in Level 0 fill themselves when you aren’t looking.