The Key

“Where did you want to end up?” the technician asked.

“Well, to work,” replied Stephan.

“So early to work?” she asked suspiciously.

For some reason, Stephan felt ashamed, as if going to work early was something wrong. In reality, there was nothing unusual about Stephan going to work early. It was just a habit of his. He entered early and left early. Besides, it was more enjoyable for him to work in the morning. Moreover, for the past few days, almost all the teleporter doors in the office had been malfunctioning, so employees had to literally queue up to enter the office to avoid crowding at the doors. And since Stephan was the manager and held morning meetings, he had to be at work on time to not be late for his own meeting. But this morning, Stephan didn’t make it to work on time.

As always, with a habitual hand movement, he selected the office code on his remote teleporter, clicked the “open” button, briskly pulled the handle, opened the door, and then immediately slammed it shut in horror. Instead of the office lobby, Stephan saw in the semi-darkness the familiar floral wallpaper decorating the hallway of a very familiar house. At first, Stephan was afraid he had gone crazy. He opened the door slightly again and peeked inside.

The flowers on the walls were in place. Stephan wiped a cold drop from his forehead, selected the “Office” option again on his key, aimed it at the teleporter receiver, carefully pressed the button, and then cautiously turned the handle and opened the door. Behind the door were the floral wallpaper. Stephan also cautiously closed the door and stared at it in bewilderment, as if hoping to find the answer to his problem in the upholstery, but then remembered that he was late for work and decided to use the technical function of his key to contact technical support. And now his key was being manipulated by the plump fingers of a technician of retirement age dressed in a salad-colored bathrobe.

“Did it come into contact with liquids?” she asked.

“I washed my face in the morning, had coffee,” replied Stephan.

“Not you, the key!”

“Oh! No, I keep it in my wallet. Yesterday, though, I transferred it to my pocket. Jean pocket,” Stephan added for some reason.

“Why were you wearing jeans yesterday?” asked the brazen technician. Stephan was so taken aback by this pressure that he didn’t even have time to be surprised and, like a rehearsed lesson, blurted out:

“To a friend,” he replied, sniffing. “It was my friend’s birthday.”

“I see, I see,” said the technician sarcastically, as if everything about Stephan suddenly became clear to her. She pressed something on the key again, and stared intently at the liquid crystal screen. “I don’t understand, testing needs to be done.”

“I’m late for work,” Stephan worriedly interjected.

The technician smiled slightly apologetically and replied:

“You’ll be late for work today. I can’t understand what’s wrong with your key. Something strange is going on with it. All the connections seem fine, the program is working, yet you ended up with me instead of the office. Where did you get taken instead?”

Stephan felt embarrassed and mumbled:

“Just somewhere else.”

“Ah, I see,” nodded the technician, satisfied, reviewing the previous destinations. “One of your destinations is called ‘Lulú.'” The old woman slyly and knowingly winked at Stephan.

Stephan blushed deeply, remembered the floral wallpaper, and lied:

“My wife’s school friend. They’ve called her Lulú since school. We went to her housewarming. My wife couldn’t find her key, so they used mine,” Stephan continued to make up more and blushed even more. From the outside, of course, he could see that this story about Lulú looked ridiculous, but for some reason he wanted to lie a little more to make the story look somewhat plausible.

“Okay, don’t rack your brains. I don’t know you, your wife, or this Lulú. Sort it out yourselves,” the technician waved her hand, making Stephan feel like he was completely hopeless. “Here’s your emergency key, go home, and I’ll deal with your teleporter.”

“Go home? But why?” Stephan exclaimed.

“Yes. For technical reasons. I’ll call the main office. Maybe there’s an issue with the database. They won’t tell you anything anyway. Do you work far from here?”

“In another city, 400 kilometers,” sighed Stephan. On one hand, he had a lot of work at the office. On the other hand, he didn’t want to go there at all, and if for technical reasons he could spend the whole day at home with a bottle of beer, why not take advantage of the opportunity? So Stephan’s face lit up with some tranquility. “Here, sign for receiving the emergency key and your receipt.”

Stephan hesitated:

“So, you mean I can’t have it back? I’ll check it at home myself. After all, I’m an engineer,” he said authoritatively. The technician, for some reason, handed Stephan the key without any respect for his title, shrugged, and quietly said:

“If you break it, you won’t get anywhere until they make a new one. And they’re testing a new system now, they’re busy. They won’t tell you anything. Do you promise not to break anything?” Stephan promised not to break anything and, feeling relieved by the realization of a tender image of honey foam, clicked the emergency key button, pulled the teleport handle, and found himself in his own hallway.

He settled into the soft armchair, took a sip from the dark brown bottle with the golden label, wiped the beer foam from his lips, took his long-suffering key in his hands, and stared at it thoughtfully, as if his gaze would immediately make the key work. At first, Stephan stared intently, furrowing his brow. Then he raised his eyebrows high, as if to say that this situation with the key greatly surprised and puzzled him. Then, for some reason, Stephan’s expression became sympathetic, and after that, he unexpectedly smiled and blushed again, apparently remembering the floral wallpaper. Finally, he snapped out of it and, businesslike, as a real engineer, looked at the key and decided to check all the links himself.

“Okay, this digital combination is linked to the office. Correct!” Stephan rejoiced. “Lulú, Lulú…” he thoughtfully muttered and checked the digital combination linked to Lulú’s teleporter. The combination was correct. “Oh, let me check my mother-in-law just in case…” Stephan thought, although he would have gladly broken that particular combination himself. The link to his mother-in-law was perfectly correct. Stephan began to check all the other links: friends, relatives, business partners, meeting places, leisure spots, went through all of them—they were all in their places and properly linked.

“Then why did he end up in a house with floral wallpaper instead of the office?” Stephan scratched his head and decided to try the key and the teleporter again. He selected “office,” aimed the key’s signal at the teleporter’s sensor, and cautiously, as if afraid of waking someone behind the door, opened it. Behind the door were floral wallpaper.

Where else could he try to go?

And Stephan

chose “grocery store,” where there was a large selection of his favorite cheeses, and just in case, he grabbed his wallet. “Maybe it will work!” he thought, “I’ll buy some dark beer, too.”

The thought of beer briefly pushed aside the subject of Stephan’s morning problems, and he eagerly pulled the teleporter’s handle and froze in astonishment. Behind the door were floral wallpaper. Stephan carefully closed the door and, just in case, locked it.

“What if my wife’s key is broken too?” Stephan thought in horror. “And what is this?” A horrifying image of his wife against the backdrop of floral wallpaper immediately appeared in Stephan’s mind. Overwhelmed by confusion and helplessness, Stephan sat down on the chair in front of the teleporter and began to repeat anxiously:

“What to do, what to do, what to do?”

Without a doubt, he needed to check if his wife’s key was working.

Then Stephan had a remarkable and very pleasant thought: “Since my wife isn’t home, she must be at work, which means the key worked.” But for some reason, Stephan wasn’t entirely satisfied with this thought, so he decided to call his wife to dispel any doubts.

“Hello, Lana, hi, dear, how are you? Good? Great! I just wanted to know how you are, how you’re doing, how did you get to work? Not late, are you? Well, that’s good! I’m fine,” Stephan lied, “well, let’s chat later, kisses, until tonight.” Stephan hung up the phone and sighed with relief. The image of his wife against the backdrop of floral wallpaper quickly faded.

But, anyway, the key had to be fixed! Without risking ending up in the familiar hallway again, Stephan decided to return to the technician. He took out the emergency key, opened the teleporter, and faced his morning interlocutor.

“So, traveler through space,” she smirked, “how’s your little Lulú doing?” Stephan tried not to show any reaction, but still blushed slightly.

“Yeah, I was waiting for you to come back… Engineer,” the technician smirked sarcastically again. “Did you figure it out, fix it?”

“No, didn’t take it apart, was afraid I’d break it completely.”

“Right to be afraid. I’ve been dealing with these keys for twelve years now. And you call me an ‘engineer’! I’m my own engineer! – proudly declared the technician. I was the one who made the main call. – And while Stephan stared at the technician with eyebrows raised in anticipation, she held a dramatic pause, after which she said: “Well, what can I tell you… Your key works!”

“So, how does it ‘work’?” Stephan got really angry.

“Just like that. It works. They’re testing our new program. It’s called ‘Emotional Linking.’ Apparently, they accidentally launched a test version on the main server. Your key has a sensor that used to be unnecessary, since the software was still in development, but now that sensor is working. The idea is that your key reads your desire, not a digital code. Roughly speaking, you want to go to work. You think, feel – ‘To work’ – and boom, the key automatically links to your office. Of course, I’m telling you all this against the rules, because the system is new, beta testing hasn’t happened yet, it’s unclear whether it will be launched in the near future or not. It hasn’t affected anyone else, you’re the only one like this. Apparently, you really want to get to that Lulú so badly, but you don’t want to go to work at all, it seems.”

Red as a crab, Stephan decided to play the angry client and even pounded his fist on the table.

“What is this all about! I declare responsibly that I never even thought about floral wallpaper.”

“Okay, calm down, give me your key, I’ll fix the system now.”

The technician took the key, connected it to the network, pressed a few more buttons, tested the teleportation device with the key’s signal, made sure everything was working, returned the device to Stephan, and unexpectedly concluded:

“Thank you for using our services!”

Stephan grinned crookedly, selected “home” from the menu, aimed the key at the teleporter, pressed the button, opened the door, and found himself in his own hallway. He sighed with relief, knowing he wouldn’t spend the rest of the day relaxing with beer. He got ready and went to work. He made it to the post-lunch meeting, accomplished many useful tasks, finished yesterday’s report, returned home as if nothing had happened at five in the evening, opened the teleporter’s door, put his briefcase in the corner of the hallway, took off his jacket, and sniffed. The apartment smelled sweet.

He peeked into the kitchen. His wife was cooking.

“M-m-m-m!” Stephan stretched and kissed his wife on the cheek.

“Hi!” she replied without looking away from the stove.

“What are you cooking?”

“A surprise!” his wife answered cunningly.

“Well, okay,” Stephan smiled. “How was your day, by the way?”

“Fine,” she replied.

“When’s dinner?” Stephan asked. But for some reason, his wife started answering a completely different question.

“You know, something amazing happened to me today,” she said, looking at Stephan strangely, “my key did something weird!”

Suddenly, Stephan felt his shirt collar tightening, he adjusted his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his collar.

“Gone since morning. I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

Stephan sighed with relief. But Lana continued.

“And then, when I found it, it turned out that the teleporter door was open. At first, I didn’t understand why. You were still asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you up, so I peeked inside, and there I saw…”

“FLORAL WALLPAPER!” Stephan shouted desperately.

“What wallpaper, what’s wrong with you,” he heard his wife’s voice and woke up.

In the half-light, he saw his wife’s concerned face, holding him by the shoulder.

“You’ve been muttering about some floral wallpaper all night, I couldn’t fall asleep, and now you’re yelling. Did you have a terrible dream?”

“I did! A terrible one,” Stephan sighed with relief, closing his eyes. “I dreamt… a nightmare,” he said, rolling onto his side and peacefully falling asleep.