Sherman Chex wakes up 3 hours later in what seems to be an orange garden. The Orange needs him alive.
He looks around confused. He shouldn't be alive after the water washed him away.
“Is this Verona? I was expecting a waiting room.”
He stands up and notices a set of orange clothes which he quickly changes into. The purple clothes, which he wore previously, burn as soon as they hit the floor.
He looks around the large room, but he can only see orange trees, so he takes an orange off a tree and throws it directly upwards.
The orange doesn't come back down.
He continues walking until he sees a set of stairs. At the top, he finds a pair of black shoes. After putting them on, he looks down at the bottom of the trees. They're all completely identical.
“That must have taken a lot of skill.”
He also sees a group of people in blue clothes working to harvest oranges on the opposite side of the garden. He rushes over to them.
“Hello! Where am I?”
One of the workers momentarily looks up at him, not quite paying attention.
“ You're in The Orange’s main building. ”
“The Orange? What am I doing here then?”
They look at him again, and finally notice his orange hair.
“ Oh, the dirt guy. They told us that you should go to the meeting room on the 5th floor. “
“Thank you!”
He goes through the door behind the workers and enters a room with some machines. There’s a conveyor belt, a machine which puts oranges into boxes, a machine that seals the boxes, and a machine that tosses the boxes through a window, straight into a fire. There are several employees operating the machines, all wearing blue clothes. On the walls, there are many doors, with workers entering and exiting in no apparent pattern. So, he asks the employees where to go.
They point him in the direction of an orange door, which he probably should’ve noticed already. Upon opening the door, he is met with a long empty white corridor. On the other side, there is a single door. As he walks through the hallway, he notices the ceiling. The ceiling is a stained glass mosaic depicting a man catching an orange. He recognizes it, as a miniature version was on display in the museum.
Once he reaches the door, he’s met with an absolutely humongous library, completely full of seemingly unendingly tall bookshelves. Each book in the shelves has a title featuring several numbers, starting with 2521 and ending with 6↑↑↑↑↑↑6. Sherman Chex opens the book titled 2521, and flips to the last page.
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It reads:
[ As the world comes to an end, the Orange haired man only has one question.
‘If I continue working with you, will I have to see that person again?’
The world doesn’t answer.
‘So it’s all for nothing, then.’
And as such, the world ends, and the man continues on. ]
Sherman Chex has no idea what any of that means. He goes to the opposite corner of the library and opens the book titled 6↑↑↑↑↑↑6. It’s a very small book.
He opens to the last page and reads:
[ He opens to the last page and reads:
[[ He opens to the last page and reads:
[[[ He opens to the last page and reads:
[[[[ He opens to the last page and reads: ]]]]
]]]
]]
]
He quickly closes the book.
The door to the next room is over here, and once he enters, he’s in a regularly sized room. He sees several people coming and going through a revolving door to the outside. Turning around, he sees that the door he just came from is labelled in a language he doesn’t understand. He stops one of the people going through the door and asks them a question.
“Hello! Could you please tell me how to get to the 5th floor?”
They look at him, slightly confused.
“ If you want to get to floor 5, just use the elevator... “
“Thank you!”
He finally notices the elevator on the other side of the room, enters, and presses the button for the fifth floor.
Once he’s on the 5th floor, he sees a man with black hair curled in an unnatural way, almost resembling flowers in a band around his head. The man doesn’t notice him.
“Hello?”
He turns around and jumps backward in shock.
“Goodness gracious, you look just like him!”
“Huh?”
“Wait, nevermind, I don’t know what it is I saw but you look completely different. Anyway, we’ve got to talk to you, so follow me.”
Sherman Chex follows him into a meeting room, where two people are seated. The man sits down, making it three.
The first person is another man with black hair. He’s wearing a blue shirt and black pants. It’d be very difficult to pick him out of a crowd. Despite staring a hole into the door, his eyes appear as if he’s not there.
The second, a woman with long black hair, she’s wearing a red sweater and black pants. Before they walked in, she was spinning in her chair out of boredom.
The third, the man with flower-like hair. He’s wearing a white coat and black pants.
There are three empty chairs.
The man in blue snaps back to reality and is confused and angry.
“Why does he look like that?”
The woman in red responds in turn.
“He looks nothing like him.”
He looks at her in shock.
“Suzanne, he looks EXACTLY like him.”
She sighs and looks at the third person, confused.
“He looks nothing like him, right?”
The man in white nods.
“Yeah, I don’t see it either.”
The first man throws his hands into the air.
“Are you serious? He literally has the EXACT same hair. Who else has hair like that?”
The third man wants to lower the tension.
“Calm down, Virgil. This isn't an amnesia story.”
Virgil mumbles at a volume which everyone in the room can clearly hear.
“‘Course Alexander Dars would agree with his wife.”
The third man throws his palm at his own face.
“By that logic, shouldn’t you be agreeing with your sister?”
As they continue to bicker, Sherman Chex is standing there, unsure if he should sit down in the chair they provided for him. He decides it’s best for him to sit down.
The chair collapses when he sits down, making a loud noise.
All three turn to look at him.
Sherman Chex is quite confused.
