Up on Cloud Nine

Prologue

The hotel manager smiled, ‘Ah, Miss Millie Doherty, our best customer. How long would like to check in for today?’ the manager, Millie observed, was tall. He had 8 buttons on either side of his straight blue jacket. His right eyebrow was slightly shorter than the left, and his left eye was mildly bluer than the right.

Millie took three steps forwards, her left foot then her right then her left again. She nodded at the hotel manager but didn’t look him in the eyes, she didn’t like eye contact. People seemed to make strange expressions with their eyes, that Millie couldn’t read. It was confusing.

‘Yes,’ she muttered to the floor, ‘I would like to check in today for 34 minutes and 24 seconds please, because that is how long my Dad said the funeral would run for.’ The manager cocked his hat in a friendly way and handed her entrance card.

The plastic was cold in her fingers, but it wasn’t too heavy. She could see the hotel name printed boldly on its plastic front. The font was Times New Roman, size 14, which was her favourite as it was clear to read. She looked at the card’s writing, ‘Cloud Nine Hotel Services, escapism from Reality since 1982.’

Millie liked words, sometimes when she was at home by herself she would pile up as many books she could find and make them into a fortress. She was safe inside her book castle. Words soothed her- well at least printed ones did. She didn’t like spoken ones very much, but she liked written ones. She usually carried a written book with her at all times in case she got nervous, as the words themselves seemed to cradle her and remind her that there was some order in the world.

In her pocket today was a book about Binary Stars. She liked reading about Binary Stars.  As she passed through the Hotel’s entrance she was thrown into the hotel lobby, which was moderately sized. She marched past the people other hotel guests awkwardly until she reached the back of the room.

The lobby was crowded and filled with dizzyingly bright lights and colours- normally this would have made her nervous, but up on cloud nine she was rarely scared of anything. She came to cloud nine often as she didn’t have to think about anything here except the book she was reading. Millie passed through the door she had been intending to take out into the vast library. Millie smiled fondly, rushing in.

Mrs Peaks, the Liberian waved at her as she came in, Millie nodded jerkily. Mrs Peaks was a rather squat woman of around fifty, she had horn- rimmed glasses that magnified the size of her eyes until she looked like a rather excited house fly.  Millie rarely spoke to Mrs Peaks- as she didn’t entirely trust her. Mrs Peaks frequently wore brown- and Millie didn’t trust anyone who wore brown. Brown was a horrible colour. Millie didn’t like brown things or black things but she did like blue things and green things because they were the colours of the sea.

She swarmed in deeper to the labyrinth that was the library and stood in the middle of the tiled marble floor. When she looked down she could see her shy reflection watching her, she waved at it briefly before admiring the décor of the library. It always seemed to change every time she came here depending on what she was reading.

As she gazed up into the cavernous ceiling she could see hundreds of tiny twinkling stars, set on a contrasting velvet black sky.  The stars looked like diamonds trapped forever in their tiny corner of space, which they called home. Millie wondered which galaxy these stars belonged to and what class of stars. Millie wondered aloud, ‘Maybe they are red giant stars or red dwarf stars, or perhaps they are the famous variable stars who maintain a constant brightness.’ She stared in awe at the stars for exactly 7.5 minutes. Soon her mind was filled with nothing but stars. Millie recalled the variable star equation fondly to mind, m-M= (5log)10(d-5).

Glass planets hung like orbs all around. They were green, pink, blue and yellow. Millie reached out to touch one and as she did it sparkled brightly. She sat mesmerised by its patterns. The flashing colours changed at three second intervals, yet the longer she sat the more the colours blended. They pulsed so quickly that she struggled to distinguish their separate colours. Reluctantly, she tore her eyes away and marvelled at the spiralled glass staircase, and ran upstairs in record time, tripping over her own feet in her eagerness.