Someone was knocking on the door. Andy sat up, groggily, and looked around. What was happening? Where was he? He felt strangely dazed, and as he looked around, he saw he was sitting alone in an empty meeting room.
There was another knock, slightly stronger. The door opened slightly and a woman peeked inside.
"Um," she said, "sorry, but we have booked this room now."
Andy shook his head to clear it. "Oh, of course," he said. "I'm sorry." He collected his phone and laptop and got up from the chair, while the woman and couple of others looked on.
Andy smiled apologetically as he walked past them, but slowed and stopped as soon as he was out in the corridor. He felt... strange. Strange, but good. Really good, as if something great had happened.
But what, exactly, had happened? He didn't remember. All he remembered was... going to a meeting with - Dave? Yes, Dave, who was going to show him a draft for the presentation he'd be giving at next week's company meeting. Had he shown that? Had he shown it, and it had been so boring Andy had fallen asleep?
He chuckled to himself as he walked down the corridor. Dave was good at making presentations, and a capable and enthusiastic speaker. It was strange that Andy had fallen asleep. It was also strange, come to think of it, that Dave had just left him there, sleeping, with his head on his arms on the table.
It was even stranger that he didn't feel as if he'd just woken up from a nap. He felt energetic and happy, and - eager. For what, he didn't know, but he was definitely looking forward to something. It couldn't be that company meeting, could it? Those were usually very slow and dull affairs. Then - what was it?
As he headed back to his own desk, he tried to push the whole thing out of his mind. He had other things to do, and other things to think about. He'd ask Dave about it when he saw him next.
To his surprise, Dave had sent an email asking him if he had more comments on the presentation, now that he'd had time to think about. Andy almost replied that he didn't remember giving any comments, and in fact didn't remember the presentation at all, but as he clicked reply, he had a sudden image flashing into his mind. An image of a spiral.
A big, black and white spiral, filling the whole screen and sending twirling patterns over the walls in the meeting room. He blinked in surprise. Where did that come from? He'd never seen such a spiral. He was sure of it.
He hesitated, and then deleted the blank email. He could reply later, when he'd actually had some time to think, rather than sleep. Right now, there was work to do. He still felt eager, and even more so than before.
Andy hummed to himself as he navigated to the project he was currently working on. It wasn't very interesting - at least he hadn't thought so, but his newfound eagerness seemed to spread into it as well. This was turning out to be a good day!
By lunchtime, Andy was happy but frustrated. He'd had a productive morning, with that sense of eagerness pulling him through his different tasks and keeping him in a good mood. There was a small, nagging voice, though, whispering in his mind that this was all good and proper, but not quite the right thing for him to do. This wasn't what he was supposed to do. This wasn't what he needed to do.
Yes
, he told it,
this is what I need to do. This is my job. This is what I do.
He tried to ignore the voice, but it didn't go away. The feeling kept growing stronger, along with the eagerness. When he got back to his desk he felt energetic and raring to go, but felt no enthusiasm for his tasks.
Something was weird. Not wrong, definitely not wrong - he felt very clearly that the eagerness, the yearning, was pulling him in the right direction, towards something he needed and wanted and should make sure he got, but it pulled him away from his work. And he didn't know what it was pulling him towards.
The spiral had something to do with it, he thought. At first, he'd just pushed it away and ignored it each time it rose into his mind, but it kept coming back, more and more often, more and more clearly and strongly. By now it hovered in his mind constantly, and not in the back of it either. It hung right in the middle of his mind, turning slowly, pulling him in.
He had seen spirals before, of course, and he knew that looking into a turning spiral had the interesting visual effect of making you feel like you were going into it. The spiral in his mind was turning very slowly, but he could feel himself longing for it to speed up, to spin faster, and to draw him into it, pulling him deep into it.
It was very distracting, and getting more so by the minute. He went to a meeting, but struggled to follow along in the discussion. He went back to his desk, but found himself zoning out as the spiral grew larger and larger in his mind. It felt almost as if it was growing too large to stay in his mind, as if it wanted to get out of his mind, out of his head. As if it wanted to escape, and to hang before him, before his eyes, so he could stare at it and lose himself in it.
It was distracting, and confusing, but very, very pleasant. It felt great to think about the spiral. He wanted to see the spiral. He wanted to stare into the spiral. But he couldn't, of course. He couldn't spend his workday daydreaming about some stupid spiral.
Towards mid-afternoon it was all he could do. He was completely unable to focus on his work anymore, and felt dazed and stunned, in a very good way, by the spiral slowly turning in his mind. As it grew stronger and stronger, and the eagerness he'd felt resolved into an overwhelming desire to see the spiral, it crowded everything else out of his mind.
