He reached the end of the corridor and stopped, staring at the wall in front of him, and then at the communicator, which indicated that the dot was right below him. He stood there, nonplussed for a minute or two, and then looked down, squinting at the floor below his shoes till he found what he was looking for. A section of carpet to the left of the conveyor belt, wide enough for two people to stand on, that had ridges running along it, demarcating it from the floor around it. As he looked at it, a single metallic clang rang out, jarring the silent corridor even as the floor at his feet slid back smoothly to reveal a dimly lit space below the now open trapdoor. He peered down into it. All he could see was a conveyor belt descending into the gloom below.

Tentatively, he rested his foot on the belt—which purred to life immediately—and then stepped on it. As it carried him down, he racked his brains, trying to think of something, anything that might give him an edge.

Nothing.

Only too soon, he reached the bottom and found himself in a short passageway so narrow that he couldn’t have put his hands on his hips without brushing the walls. The passage ran on for a dozen feet or so, leading up to a huge metal door, shining silver, at least three times his height. He walked towards it, quicker now. He had no doubt that it would open.

The door slid up and he stepped through, his eyes furtively darting about, though it was so dark he could hardly make out anything. He heard the door slide shut behind him and felt a momentary stab of panic squeezing at his chest before his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he stood there, jaw comically agape, as the enormity—there was literally no other word—of what surrounded him sank in.

He was in the biggest place that he’d ever seen, so vast that it looked dimensionless—he could see neither the walls nor the ceiling. The effect was strangely disorienting. In every direction, the floor stretched on and on as far as the eye could see, and further still. It was like stepping through a door into the open—except he was indoors, with carpeting underfoot. On either side of him, a double row of lights ran straight ahead, reaching out into the shadows—the only light in the room, Albert realized—their glow marking a passageway across the expanse. The sheer extent, the hugeness, of this space was mind-boggling. Yet, it was not the place that made him stand there, frozen, every muscle tensed. It was the machines.