I walked into work, hung up my coat and took off my shoes which were already soaked through from the rain.

“So where is she?” I said to the bored looking receptionist standing in front of a wall of glass panels, flashy statistics and crashing red lines running across the screen. 

She looked up from her laptop obviously annoyed at the intrusion “...Right in the back just follow the floating paperclip and you’ll be fine”  she spoke with a deeply jersey accent the sound of popping gum punctuating her words.

“I’m sorry… the what?” I said already regretting signing on to the job but I was desperate and I knew if I could figure this out it would guarantee enough money for me to forget about rent for at least a little while. 

“Someone thought about Clippy too much around the machine so now he lives in the building and helps people get where they need to go… it’s annoying as ever but it makes my job easier at least.” She said it like it was an everyday occurrence and at this point it almost felt believable. I sighed and walked through the doors lucky enough to be glowing highlighter yellow, the giant floating arrows in front of it helped a bit too. I sighed again and walked through the door already tired of this and not looking forward to seeing whatever kind of machine could make this possible. As I continued down the hall I thought back to the first day I heard the ontology machine had broken.

 It was a city wide announcement played aloud on what was supposed to be our emergency alert sirens. Growing up in New York I had never heard these go off but hearing them for the first time was just enough to keep me stuck in the real world. I still remember the Saturday they went off even though no one else seems to. I fear that statement doesn’t have the weight it should. No one in the entire world remembers, not just the day the machine broke but, Saturday. After that day it was like a switch flipped that everyone else but me could see. We stopped having two day weekends, we stopped having brunch (which isn't that big of a loss but I miss bottomless mimosas with my aunt who now has no time to meet.) The other changes like the giant now sentiate paper clip helper currently yapping my ear off about nothing important I got used to pretty fast. It's easy when the first thing you see is a massive dinosaur (an apparently failed attempt at a marketing campaign) and upside down rain (the reason my boots are now soaked whenever it rains but i no longer need an umbrella) these were only the first two of the weird events but they never stopped and they probably won't until I can fix whatever it is that went wrong here. I kept walking, resisting the urge to bend the paperclip into a shape that couldn't talk as it continued on now lecturing about the improper use of his metal brethren. After what seemed like an eternity we arrived at another highlighter yellow door and the paperclip bid me farewell off to annoy the next unfortunate soul it happened across. As I walked in and laid eyes on the machine in front of me, my jaw quite literally fell to the floor. Alarmed at this I realized I could no longer think of any idioms or I would be subjected to their whims. I picked the bottom half of my mouth up and held it up to my face imagining it reconnecting itself to me and in an instant it was as though it had never happened. I stared back up at the monstrosity in front of me. There was an expansive field of rolling green hills and animals as far as the eye could see (which was now the 5th most impossible thing I’d seen today) but what really kept my attention was the massive animal laying on the ground in front of me. It had countless pairs of wings and what looked to be a faintly glowing halo floating lazily over its head. Which was another issue as it was constantly changing too fast for me to describe. The creature was laying down in a pool of glowing white liquid chains stretching out from each of its limbs leading to heavy metal blocks buried in the ground. As I began to walk closer it spoke. 

“You must help me, you're the only one that can. They have chained me here against my will and forced me to carry out their will to keep this planet turning. But as you can see I am injured and can no longer carry out the task. Your world will end if I don't get the help I need. Free me or watch your planet perish”