"...so, was he ok?" one girl asks.
"yeah, he was fine," the other responds.

 the dirty, beige carpet abruptly ends, giving way to polyurethane tile which is momentarily stained with mud, water, and smeared food.  continue walking.  the two girls come into view.  they are attractive, resembling nothing and everything.  their makeup is smeared slightly, obscuring certain aspects of the face, distorting others to odd degrees.  they seem primal in appearance and demeanor, yet are considered highly socialized creatures of the "modern age."
 
"sheila!" the first suddenly exclaims, "i am so tired and still a little bit wasted."

 sheila, apparently not as hung-over, offers the other girl a shoulder with which to support herself.  the situation is very comical, since the girl in need of assistance is about six feet tall, while sheila is five-foot-seven.  the two slumped together resemble some sort of odd renaissance-humanism sculpture.
 faint bells can be heard overhead, indicating that the elevator has arrived on the floor above me.  shortly, the aluminum plated doors siltenly slide open, revealing nothing.  sometimes it's a let down when nothing is on the elevator.  not even people, but food, discarded mail, empty beer cans.  all of them emit some sort of personality or mystery that is instantaneously created in my mind the minute i notice such objects.  today, there is a complete absence of any inorganic elevator material.  no people or garbage "memorials" of people.
 walk into the elevator.  shoes make no sound.  i make no sound. do the two girls even notice me?  i do not exist.  sheila and her friend walk into the elevator as well.
 suddenly, sheila's boyfriend, i think, shouts "wait!" and slowly walks to her and offers a purse, which i assume is sheila's.  her boyfriend is near naked, wearing only plaid boxer shorts.  grogginess and drunken wonder still governing his every response.
 "thanks, dear," she casually says, as if losing her purse is a nonchalant affair.  the boyfriend drifts back to a room down the hall, a vaporous apparition of alcohol fumes.
 my mind is perplexed by such beings-what are they, what do they do, why are they existing?  certianly, the two girls are people, or are they?  do they think on their own, or does the mind-controlling inner-atmosphere of alcohol and social consciousness control their actions?
 the elevator door closes.  silence has somehow managed to follow me in.  i look at the ceiling, shiny, aluminum plated elevator buttons.  lights originally illuminated the buttons when they were pressed.  now there is no light at all.  my gaze changes from the buttons to the floor.  trying to avoid eye contact if at all possible.
 i wonder if it becomes obvious.  which makes my nervousness increase all the more.  does it matter that i do not want them to be there?  that i was hoping to ride the elevator down alone?  no, it doesn't.  they are already there.  the potential experience is ruined, and shall never be the same.
 after a few seconds, the elevator stalls, then starts again, reaching the first floor in a matter of seconds.  i quickly rush out of the elevator.  rubber soles scuffing against linoleum floor.  step, lift, lower, repeat.  step, lift, lower, repeat.  it all seems so pointless, so mundanely useless, ultimately futile.  in the end, i just go back from where i came.  i hear sheila and her anonymous friend slowly drift out, their excessively long jeans swishing back and forth.  back and forth.  going back from where they came.  i hope they trip, i think, angry at their vacuousness and inopportune arrival in the elevator which i had hoped to ride alone.
 i walk past the front desk, the faded, waxed fake marble floor tile looks like mashed avocadoes mixed with mud.  i can't help but think about things, i just think.  i think, therefore i can't help it.  i wonder if sheila and her friend think about anything while they walk.  what is their reason for existence, do they even warrant one?  do they even think about why they get out of their large and comfortable beds in the morning, or the afternoon, whatever the case may be.  most likely not.  not even i can justify my life, my reason for living, and i think about it quite a bit.  not even the president of the largest country on this fetid planet has a reason for existing.  there will always be at least one member of the human population who can govern equally as well as he can.  maybe that person can rule even better, the world may never know.  right now everything begins to anger me.  the front desk looks plastic even though it is some form of fabricated wood.  chairs in the lobby are old, worn, and burned-out orange color.  it would be better if there were no chairs at all.  the fireplace that is never on fire, never producing heat, never justifying its existance, just like sheila and her friend.  all these relatively mundane things are slowly infiltrating my brain, the annoyance and anger become an infection that, while able to be controlled, still rages throughout my head.
 suddenly, i am disrupted from the internal dischord.  i have stumbled upon the entrance to the cafeteria and must now present identification and debit my meal card to proceed farther.  realizing that i do not even have the card in my hand, i quickly grab for my wallet in my pocket and remove the plastic rounded rectangle from the top upper fold in my worn wallet.  the card has a specific spot:  if i must have a specific spot in this obscene "society," then the least my card with computer-digitized photo identification can do is have a specific spot as well.  i wonder if society ever tries to justify it's existence.  most likely not.  it has always existed, therefore it has every right to continue to exist.  it exists, therefore it exists.  i question it's right to exist.  i present my plastic card, with the badly pixelated image of my face on it, to the worker guarding the cafeteria, who looks at it seemingly with disgust, takes my identification number down on a piece of paper, and lets me pass.  the cafeteria is a testament to why things should not exist.  the chalky, plasterboard ceiling along with the vomitous orange-green crush-resistant carpet encompass every inch, every angle conceivable in the area.  i walk into the line which is waiting to obtain a pink plastic serving tray and aluminum silverware.  the line coils around to the area where servants ladle out heated food items.  those that are cold are able to be procured by on their own, without any assistance form servants.  like an odd, multicolored snake of designer fabric and brand names, the line slithers forward slowly, and eventually i recieve a pink plastic tray and a set of silverware and leave the line.  i walk past both the hot and cold lines of food.  what they serve is unnecessary.  one does not need to be served large, unhealthy doses of eggs, meat, and potato products.  of course, no one realizes this fact and i remain silent, as always.  i manuever between the lines, and make my way to the cereal dispensation area.  i think to myself, this one bowl of grain and sugared frosting contains more nutrients than whatever they are serving in the typical lines.  i am the only person in the cereal line.  there is no line.  it is just me.  i pour defatted milk into the bowl and sit down at a nearby table.  the tables are made out of fiberboard, coated with white plastic, and this particular one extends far to my right.  i am sitting in the leftmost corner.  i begin feeding myself the mixture of sugar coated baked oats and artificially colored marshmallows. i wonder that since i've eaten so many artificially colored things, if my internal organs have since become artificially colored.
 out of the corner of my eye, i notice a girl sit down two chairs away from me, at the same table.  i stare at this intrusion out of the coner of my eye.  soon, two more girls sit down on the opposite side of the fiberboard table.  i stare at these three intrusions out of the corner of my eye for some time.  i am baffled.  why so close to me?  the table is much longer and would easily support them at the other end, and yet they picked to sit two chairs away from me and disrupt my peace, my solitude, my eating of cereal.  of course, they are not aware of this fact, and i cannot blame them for interrupting my morning ingestion.  yet i do blame them, and i scorn them in my mind.  after a while, i turn my attention back to my cereal.  the bowl is made from clear plastic, which has become chipped and scarred with age.  i wonder what else has been put into this bowl, how many pieces of cereal it has held.  probably more than i want to know.  my cereal has begun to dissolve into the milk, enzymes slowly breaking the sugary morsels down into a paste.  the milk in time, would take over my stomach's job of digestion.  however, i quickly eat the remaining pieces, stand up, and put my tray on the conveyor belt, all with the grace of an insect on amphetemines.  the conveyor belt leads to a behind-the-scenes worker who empties the plate, silverware, and glasses of leftover food that a third world country would gladly accept.  the plates are then splashed with boiling water and detergent to sterilize any germs or poisons.  then the plates are put back into circulation for others to use.
 i quickly walk out of the cafeteria, standing up straight, not looking at the front desk, dilapidated chairs, or non-warming fireplace.  i reach the elevator lobby, and press the button to ascend upstairs.  twenty seconds later, the elevator arrives silently.  no one else is around to enter the elevator with me.  waves of relief wash over me and an internal sigh comes forth.  the ride upward takes no more than seven seconds, and the doors of the elevator open with a ring annoucning my arrival.  i walk out of the elevator, down the hall, and turn right.  i walk down another hall.  i imagine that i have walked a path due to performing these same activities daily.  the vending machine still whirs loudly, the electric cooling system in need of repair.  it will never be repaired.  the hall leads to my room, the last door on the left.  i insert the key into the lock, turn the door handle, and walk into my room.
 it has been twenty minutes since i decided to eat this morning.  i have come full circle; i am now back in my room, sitting in front of the computer where i made the initial decision.  staring at me, in the glass of the monitor, is my distorted, ghostly face.  i blink, it blinks.  is this the antimatter me? what i would resemble if i lived inside the computer's world?  no, it is merely a refraction of light rays from the convex surface of the glass and my reflection.  it is nothing special, an everyday affair, i have seen it happen dozens of times before.  however, inside the pupil of my right eye, the cursor to a text editing program blinks on, then off, on, off, slowly, on, off.  it vanishes, then resurfaces, appearing and reappearing in the same spot hundreds of times a minute.  it leaves, but it never leaves.  everything it does is completely the same, predictable thing.  totally mundane and noticeably automatic.  my right pupil appears, then disappears, along with the cursor.  i think to myself, i am that cursor.  the cursor is me.  i turn off the monitor.  the cursor, along with the rest of the screen, dissolves into oblivion.