Why do the hallways lead to rooms that shouldn't exist? What makes the walls curve in impossible ways? How do the shadows stretch in directions that defy physics? Why do the tenants hear echoes from rooms that aren't there? What causes the floor plans to change each time they're drawn?
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A circle has no end.
― Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation
Cornelius Blackwood had always prided himself on his mathematical precision, which made the Meridian Heights apartment complex particularly unsettling. As the new building inspector, he’d arrived with measuring tape, blueprints, and absolute confidence in Euclidean principles. The elevator had deposited him on the seventh floor, though he distinctly remembered pressing the button for the third.
The hallway stretched before him in a manner that defied architectural logic. Apartment 7A sat directly across from 7A, both doors bearing identical brass numerals. His measuring tape confirmed the impossible: the corridor was simultaneously forty-three feet long and extending infinitely in both directions. When he knocked on the left 7A, footsteps approached from behind the right door.
Mrs. Delphine Rooker answered, her face gaunt from what she described as “the longest winter.” She’d moved in during spring, she claimed, but outside her window stretched an endless arctic landscape despite the building’s downtown location. “The seasons don’t match here,” she whispered, glancing nervously at walls that seemed to curve inward despite appearing perfectly straight.
Blackwood’s compass spun wildly as he documented each impossibility. Apartment 7B existed inside 7C, which somehow contained a balcony overlooking the building’s interior courtyard from above. The stairwell between floors curved upward for exactly ninety-seven steps, yet deposited him on the floor directly below where he’d started. Each measurement he recorded contradicted the last, creating a mathematical paradox that made his head throb.
On his third day of investigation, Blackwood discovered the building’s darkest secret in apartment 7∞---a unit that appeared on no blueprint but whose door materialized whenever he wasn’t looking directly at it. Inside, previous inspectors sat at desks covered in calculations, their eyes hollow and fingers bleeding from endless attempts to reconcile impossible geometries. They welcomed him with relieved smiles, grateful for fresh company in their eternal task of measuring the unmeasurable.
The Meridian Heights apartment complex continues accepting new residents, though the waiting list grows shorter each month. Prospective tenants are warned only that the rent includes utilities, and that GPS devices tend to malfunction within a six-block radius of the building.
