My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie Nobody trusts Jimmy. He is fat and bald and drinks far too much. He tells lies and can't seem to differentiate the truth from fantasy. Sometimes, he believes that he himself is a centaur - a god among literal horsemen. Nobody trusts Jimmy. He likes to mock the ladies from lower classes. They don't mean to come from such dire straits, and yet he apes them, mimics them as if they are puppets dangling from fraying strings. It is unbecoming; even Jimmy's father says so. Nobody trusts Jimmy. He once lit a quaint little pub on fire. It was a place where authors and artists alike convened to create images unlike anything seen in our dimension. Jimmy claims he is not an arsonist, yet some have heard his cackles from afar when the roofs spark and the walls crumble into lopsided chunks of ash. Do not take his words for granted; they aren't worth a shilling in our currency. There was once a woman who decided to wed him. She was stout and hairless like him...

You have entered the second floor of the Ridley Complex. Once in the lobby, you will instruct the receptionist to leave her desk and walk into the closest quarter office, not to be seen or heard by anyone. After he or she has departed, you will then operate the receptionist's computer to root out where the stash has been hidden in the building. We predict that it will either be on the seventh floor or the twentieth - but any guesstimate risks failure.