Chapter 54: The Empty Room (Valen Lim, August 30th, 2012)
Most peculiarly, this room is the hardest to access. It’s peculiar, because this room is famous for having absolutely nothing in it. It makes guests wonder when they hear of it. However, it’s dif cult to access the Empty Room because no-one wants to enter it. When you open the door, all you see is white. Expanding in nitely, a room devoid of shapes and colours and absolutely everything. You can’t seem to tell how low the oor is, how high the ceiling is, or how far the facing walls are. Step inside, however, and you would nd that you would no longer see yourself or the door. You could try and look for it, but you would never nd it. You could try and touch yourself, touch anything at all, but it will be like grasping at air. Eternal, suspended, deathless. That is the fate of anyone who enters the Empty Room. Some say the Architect likes to spend its73 afternoons in the Empty Room, thinking and drawing up blueprints for new rooms for the In nite Wing. How it exits the room afterwards, nobody knows.74
This is the rst time in the text of Our Strange and Wonderful House that the occasionally-mentioned Architect is referred to by a pronoun — which turns out to be “it”. 73
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In the comments: Zxvasdf: “When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar. The Architect carries it around in his pocket and smiles when he opens it, because each time he’s thinking about what misnomer the Empty Room is; nothing ever really exists in a vacuum.” Valen Lim: “I wish I could like that comment, or place it in…”
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