Lorelei led him through a seeming maze of hallways. And up several floors Switching from the northern stairwell, at the corner of the building, to the north-western stairwell at the middle of the hall at the 4^th floor. The north, south, east, and west stairwells ended at the 4^th floor. The north-eastern, north-western, south-eastern, and south-western stairwells started on the 4^th floor and lead to the 7^th floor before ending abruptly at the door to the hallway to the conference room. The long walk finally terminated in what Stephen guessed must be the middle of the building. All of the elevators had yet to be put into service, so they had to use stairs all of the way. "Lorelei, what floor are we on? I lost track." he said sheepishly.

"This would be the seventh floor." she said as they entered the huge room. "The skylight up there is on the ninth floor. The eighth and ninth floors are offices of executives who report directly to director Ngoyen," she explained while pointing at the huge expanse of glass that had to be at least one hundred and twenty square ft. The room itself was at least one hundred and sixty square feet. One wall had a line of steam trays lined up on folding tables covered in brightly colored paper tablecloths. A line of people was already waiting pensively all along the wall to the left of the steam trays.

Stephen was, once again, struck by the fact that the other staff members were both diverse and seemed to fit certain patterns. Each man could be seen to resemble one of five basic types with variations of age and physical condition and age The women fit into six types. They did not act like siblings, but you could see crowds of them who resembled each other too much for it to be natural. Susan and Dick alone had twenty seeming copies wandering around and socializing randomly with the other duplicates.

The smell of the food that mingled as it wafted across to them was a mélange of mid-grade cafeteria food. Even so, Stephen's stomach rumbled at the prospect of consuming some of the free lunch. The neatly painted off-white walls reflected the glare of sunlight that entered through the smoked glass of the skylight and eliminated the need for any other lighting. In the center of the room was a large horseshoe-shaped conference table surrounded by long folding tables with the same cheap paper tablecloths draped over them. "I'll go find us some seats."

"Sounds good. Can I get you anything?"

"Salad and Italian dressing please." she responded with a sweet smile.

Half an hour of navigating the milling, bored line of office workers, and Stephen had two plates ready and was headed back to the tables to look for his new executive assistant. He spotted her about half-way around the mass of tables. Her face was flushed and her eyes were blazing. Dick was there. He had a smug expression, and his eyes were opened wide in a caricature of innocence.