We begin our story with Douglas, who is standing outside of an official-looking building, complete with marble steps and columns.  Above the entrance, carved into a large brass plate, says “City Hall”.  He is holding a thick folder stuffed with papers under his arm. He looks up at the brass plate apprehensively for a moment, and then he sighs, drops his gaze to the ground, and climbs the stairs up to the door.  He purposefully walks through the dark hallways through the building – he’s been here far too many times not to know the way – and comes to a stop at a door with a large, frosted glass window set into it.  The window has a simple picture of a house in a circle, and the word “Housing” engraved across the top.  He opens the door, steps inside, and pulls the door shut behind him.  The office is dark, with no windows, and only one lamp that seems like it’s on the verge of going out.  The floor is tiled with a checkered pattern that probably had been black and white at some time, but has now faded to a yellowish-brown and, greenish-grey color.  One lone wooden chair sits against the wall, which is papered in a faded, green wallpaper.  On the opposite wall from the chair is a desk, next to a wooden, unmarked door, which has clearly seen better days, where a young, blond woman is sitting, intently focused on finding the right key to press on the typing machine in front of her.  Douglas steps over to the front of the desk, and watches her type, thinking to himself that there always seems to be a new secretary here… and wonders if there’s a simply a lot of them that work different shifts, or if there’s a high turnover… Her nose is only inches away from the keys, and she spends an uncomfortable amount of time between each key press, apparently having to read through all the keys on the machine before finding the correct one to press.  A full 5 minutes goes by (and a total of 12 key strokes), which Douglas can see by the clock behind the secretary, before she finally notices him standing quietly next to her desk.

“Yes?”

“Ah, um, I’m here to see Mr Wright…”

She rolls her eyes, “…and?”

“I had an appointment… uh…”

“Your name, please?”

“Wensley, ah, Douglas Wensley…”

She sighs, digs around among the paperwork on the desk until she finds the document she’s looking for, scans through it with her finger, silently mouthing the words on the page, until, as last, locating the correct place, digs through the desk for a pen, and then precisely draws a circle on the page, furrowing her brow, and sticking her tongue out to the side while she does.  Then she drops the pen, and the paper back onto the heap, and presses the button on a square box with a lattice across on side.  There’s a crackled ‘beep’, and then a man’s voice says: “Yes?”.

“A Mister, um, Wesley? Here to see you, sir…”

“Send him in.”

The secretary looks up at Douglas, nods, and says, “go on in,” before returning to her hunting and pecking on the typing machine.  Douglas heads over to the unmarked door, pulls it open, and steps into Mr Wright’s office.