The Reception Station

"Open the door," Lois' voice was soft, but commanding. The hair on the back of her neck was standing up, but she didn't want Maria to sense any fear or hesitation. The barmaid was taking an awful risk helping Lois already.

The woman nodded, and laid her palm on the metal touch plate. The door slid open—like something out of Star Trek. The reporter examined the room quickly from the doorway.

A single large curved television screen hanging from the ceiling on a mechanical arm dominated the room: it described a large semicircle, centered on a kind of dentist's chair, and the diffuse glow from the screen was the only light in the room. Everything in the room—walls, floors, ceiling, chair, and screen—was a light shade of pink, although some odd texturing showed it wasn't a simple paint job. Wherever Lois' gaze fell, the pink seemed to start to shift and move, swirling...

The reporter blinked several times, realizing she'd dazed out for a moment there. Kneeling down, she examined the floor near the door...and saw that the apparently "solid" pink was actually a very fine line of pink dots and lines, which shimmied and appeared to move as she shifted her head back and forth—a trick of the light.

"You've never been in there?" Lois whispered, but Maria didn't respond. The young woman was staring vacantly at the room.

The reporter grabbed her shoulders and gave the barmaid a good shake. The red-and-pink haired woman blinked several times. "So-sorry. Zoned out for a minute there."

"Yeah," Lois placed a hand on the back of her neck, trying to calm down the prickling hairs there. "Me too. C'mon." She grabbed Maria's hand and stepped into the reception room...but the barmaid stood back.

"I-I don't...I don't want to go in there." The young woman finished lamely.

"If you stay out there, they'll catch you." Lois insisted, and with a heave pulled the barmaid in with her. Maria stumbled forward. As soon as she was past the frame, the door slid shut with an audible click. The reporter noticed there were no handles or other way to open it from inside.

"It's okay," Lois tried not to stare at the spinning walls, focusing instead on Maria. She slid her arms around the barmaid, hands reaching down to cup the young woman's ass. The young woman shook in her arms. Lois could feel her pooch of a belly pressed against Maria's own soft midriff. "We have to get to the bottom of this."

A voice, female but artificial with that clipped, accentless English that suggested it had been built up from audio samples of something else, rang through the room on hidden speakers.

"Please be seated."