Office workers in a downtown tower are reporting frequent arrivals on an unlisted level that smells faintly of warm toner and fresh ambition. Directories jump from 3 to 4, yet the elevator opens on soft gray carpet that seems to reset itself as you step.
Lost staplers migrate upward and arrange themselves on a quiet cart. Coffee mugs go for a refill and return with extra initials, as if the floor is testing new signatures while no one is looking.
Printers on the approved levels have started ejecting pages stamped with a pale geometric watermark, a floor plan that maps a corridor no one drew. Toner dust gathers in output trays like breadcrumbs pointing toward an elevator ride you did not plan to take.
Badge logs now show sincere arrivals at “4.5.” The call button flickers between floors, and the elevator voice announces a landing the lobby still refuses to admit. Management continues to remind staff that the building has four floors, then asks everyone to get back to work from a stairwell that sometimes leads nowhere until it does.
“We classify this as a persistence mezzanine, a level where unfinished tasks and office supplies briefly congeal,” said Dr. Mira Latch, Floor Continuity Analyst at the Institute of Vertical Logistics. “If your notes arrive before you do, you are using it correctly.”
Staff are adapting. Meetings scheduled for 4.5 conclude on 4 with action items no one remembers writing, vacuum lines loop back toward the elevator in calm arcs, and badge readers chirp goodnight from a place the building map cannot quite find.
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