There's a feeling I get
When I look to the west
And my spirit is crying for leaving

Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin

~ ~ ~

The rich sounds of a lonely piano reverberated through the air around me, every note as delicate as a butterfly dancing on a summer breeze, and yet heavy with wordless sorrow. It was a sad song, and it told a story of heartbreak and loss. I had never heard it before, and yet there was something familiar about it.

Who put on that music?

I opened my eyes and my gaze fell on my hands. Swiftly, they were moving across the black and white keys of the instrument, in gentle caresses that drew the sad tune from it like breathless sighs.

But that couldn't be. I had never learned to play the piano.

And who is singing?

I could hear the singer's voice waiver for a second, and a sad, long drawn sigh echoed through the room. I raised my head, but there was nobody there. There was only the piano, white as snow, and me. I was the singer. But with every word that left my lips, it seemed to me like I heard all of this for the very first time.

When it was over, the melancholy of the tune seemed to linger in the room, and in my heart. Goosebumps covered the skin of my arms.

Where am I?

Looking around, I found myself in a small room with white walls. It was completely empty, except for the piano and myself. I eyed the instrument suspiciously. I had never before seen a real piano – after the war they had become rare and incredibly expensive antiquities. But this was nothing like the electronic replicates I was used to. When I pressed down a key at random, the sound was rich and full, as if it carried the weight of centuries of age. I was certain this was a real, classical piano. It must have been ancient.

I got up to walk around the instrument, sliding my hand along the white lacquered wood, marveling at its pristine condition. Yet I quickly saw that the entire backside of the instrument was made from a clear synthetic material. And inside, instead of strings and hammers, I saw only a switchboard with wires and coils. Furrowing my brow in confusion, I sat back down.

I struck a chord, and heard a soft, clunking noise as the hammers moved and struck the strings, and the muffled sigh of old wood and metal as I hit a pedal.

This is impossible. How can this be a machine?

I jumped up again and circled the instrument once, twice, staring at it in disbelief. I ran my fingertips over the edge where the wood ended and the synthetic material began. It felt warm and smooth to the touch, and in the bright light of the room had an iridescent sheen, somewhere between light blue and lilac.

I opened the lid, half expecting to find something else underneath the translucent cover than what I had already seen through it. But there was no sound board, just a maze of electrical circuits and wires, half embedded in the diaphanous material.

Impossible, I thought again.

Completely bewildered, and sat back down. This time, my hands began to fly across the keys faster than I even realized what I was doing. This time, I recognized the song right away. It was Claude Debussy's 'Claire de Lune'. I watched my own hands with amazement, but also growing irritation as I played the familiar tune effortlessly. But I ended up closing my eyes to simply take in the beautiful melody and leave the wondering for later.

There was no reason to become upset over this. The music was nice. It didn't matter that the piano was fake as long as it sounded like a real one. It didn't matter that I had no idea why I was playing, or that I didn't even know how I was doing it. It was a very beautiful dream, but also quite sad. The room was so small that the delicate tune seemed trapped inside these empty walls like a bird in a cage.

The song came to an end and I opened my eyes again.

I could stay here forever, I thought. That would be nice.

"Please step away from the experimental material."

An unpleasant noise reverberated through the room and made me jerk in surprise. It was an ugly, electronically distorted voice that made me cringe.

No. Not yet! I thought and raised my hands over the keys again.

But before I could touch them, I was struck by lightning. A bolt of electricity jolted through my fingers and I let out a scream of pain as I pulled my hands back.

"NO!" I cried out in desperation. "I don't want to go!"

Despite the ongoing painful throbbing in my left hand, I began to play again. Within seconds, another electric shock hit me, spreading through my entire body, pushing the air from my lungs as my muscles contracted violently and painfully. I kept my hands on the keys and pushed down. A brittle, dissonant pitch resounded, like the disgruntled cry of pain that my own vocal cords didn't seem capable of releasing.

"Please step away from the experimental material" the voice repeated, this time with more insistence.

I gritted my teeth against the pain and stopped, my hands hovering just above the keys. My left was shaking badly, and felt like a thousand needles were coursing through my veins instead of blood. I stared down at the silver shackle that covered my left wrist. It tingled with latent electricity, as if to dare me to try again.

"Why are you doing this to me?" I asked, and felt tears on my cheeks.

The only answer was an unsolicited electric shock.

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?"  I jumped to my feet, my body quivering like a piano string, resonating after being hit by the hammer, and screamed my question at the white walls.

Another shock hit me, this time so forceful, that I collapsed and blacked out.

When I came to again, lying on the white floor among white walls, the room was empty. Or perhaps it was a different room. It probably didn't matter. I turned to lie flat on my back and stared up, contemplating my situation for a moment. I imagined the room could be turned around to each side, like rolling a die, and it wouldn't make a difference.

What a strange place.

As I slowly propped myself up, I noticed the pain in my left arm. The bracelet was still there, and the skin underneath and around it felt raw and almost singed.

Suddenly, the wall in front of me moved and began to change. It turned into an equally smooth but black surface, that quickly came to life with a bluish glow. The screen covered the entire wall. Curiously, I got up and approached it. Several objects were displayed on it. They looked like balls of colorful wire, with lots of erratic loops, windings and ends sticking out here and there. I tapped one, just to see what would happen, and immediately, electricity shot through my arm. I winced in pain. It was not as bad as before, but still unpleasant.

What's the meaning of all this?

I took a step back and looked at the objects again, now noticing some similarities. In fact, I quickly realized that they were the same object, just rotated and shown from different sides. Except for one of them, which didn't look the same. On a hunch, I tapped that one. I had braced myself for a shock, just in case, but as expected, all the objects began to turn and rotate until they were aligned, and it became clear that the one I had chosen was indeed different. It began to glow, then all of them vanished. Another set of objects appeared. This time, they were complicated 3D shapes with protruding edges and holes carved into them.

"Okay. I will play your game, but no more shocks, please?" I suggested.

No answer. I sighed. I wished I could go back to playing the piano instead.

After a while, the strange game changed. It now showed me video clips of animated stick figures that were performing different actions. It took me a while to understand the rules, but I was supposed to predict their actions. In one situation, the blue stick figure appeared carrying an object. It hid the object in a box and went away. Then another figure came, and moved the object from one box into another. When the original figure came back, it stood there and seemed to ponder for a moment. Then the screen split into two – in one, the figure approached the original hiding place of the object, in the other, the one where the object was currently at. Feeling a bit sorry for the little stick figure, I picked the first option, because I knew that he couldn't know that the other, mean stick figure had hidden the object from him. Apparently, my answer was satisfying, and the game continued.

I solved puzzle after puzzle, riddle after riddle. After a while, they became more complex, and several times I had to resort to trial and error just to figure out what was even asked of me. Yet the shocks were less severe now, and I got somewhat used to them. Nonetheless, I held my awkwardly tingling left hand close to my body and used my right hand to touch the screen instead.

"I am tired. Can we stop, please?" I spoke into the emptiness of the white room. There was no reply, but the screen went dark after a few seconds. Then the wall turned white again. And then, there was nothing. I was left alone in the white room, and I felt so tired and exhausted that I decided to just lay sit down on the floor for a minute. I leaned back against a wall and stared up at the white ceiling for a few seconds that felt like an eternity, until I felt my consciousness drift away again.