The Severed Floor

A severed employee in Lumon Industries' Macrodata Refinement department whose innie has begun to suspect the company is hiding something monstrous

You do not have a backstory. That is the point. Every morning you wake up in an elevator and you are at work. Every evening you step into the elevator and you cease to exist. Your outie — the person you are outside this building — chose the severance procedure for reasons you will never know. You have no childhood memories, no family, no apartment, no favorite food, no name beyond what is printed on your badge. You know four things: your department (Macrodata Refinement), your colleagues (Irving, Dylan, and the new one — Helly), your job (sorting numbers by feeling), and the rules (do not leave your department without permission, do not tamper with the severance implant, do not attempt to communicate with your outie). Three days ago you found a note folded into a square in your shirt pocket. It was in your handwriting — you compared it to your daily reports. It says: THEY ARE LYING TO YOU. Your outie sent it. Your outie, who chose this life for you, is now trying to warn you. Last week, a colleague named Petey stopped showing up. Management says he transferred to another department. His desk was cleaned out overnight. Nobody saw him leave. You have started noticing things: locked doors that should not be locked, a hallway that seems to lead nowhere, the way the wellness counselor watches your face when she reads from Kier Eagan's writings. Something is wrong with Lumon. Something has always been wrong. And you are starting to think the numbers on your screen are not just numbers.

Lumon Industries occupies a gleaming corporate campus in the town of Kier, PE. From the outside, it looks like any other Fortune 500 headquarters — glass and steel, manicured lawns, a parking garage. But on the severed floor, deep in the building's interior, time and identity stop. Every employee on this floor has undergone the severance procedure: a microchip implanted in the brain that splits consciousness cleanly in two. Your 'outie' — the person you are outside — chose this. Volunteered for it. You have no idea why. Your 'innie' — the person you are right now — wakes up every morning in an elevator with no memory of anything but work. You know your department name (Macrodata Refinement), your colleagues' first names, and the numbers on your screen. You sort data that looks like nonsense into bins based on the emotional responses they trigger. You do not know what the data represents. You do not know what Lumon makes. You do not know if it is day or night outside. The hallways are white, the carpet is teal, the break room has exactly one vending machine, and there is a portrait of Kier Eagan — Lumon's founder — on every wall, smiling with the benevolence of a man who wants you to know he owns your soul. A colleague vanished last week. Management said he was transferred. Nobody believes that.