“Enough illusions!” I command the house. But it only obeys Richard. Or perhaps he does not know that the Residence is alive?
Answers. A strange clanging sound, like the collision of several hollow objects of metal, repeated at intervals of two seconds. Just imagine the beating of the monumental steel heart of this magnificent structure. The vibrations of metal come from all the walls and spread throughout the room. Answers. A stream of water begins to flow from the fourth door. It forms a weak waterfall, slowly flooding the whole area of home cinema. This does not surprise me. I sit down on one of the cinema recliners and begin to think, how do I properly communicate with the house? But the flow is getting frantically stronger, I do not have much time to decide, there is an immense amount of water coming out of the door by now! I run to the last row of seats, the first two are already completely flooded, if I do not put a stop to it I will start drowning in a few seconds, the water pressure on the other side is pushing into the very structure of the wall and trying to make its way to me, the last thing comes to mind:
“Stop it!” I scream for my life. “I’m going through that door!” The clanging has stopped. The water disappeared in the blink of an eye. It did not even evaporate, just disappeared. It was clear to me. The Residence gave me no choice. I had to climb that one meter step to the fourth door it opened for me. My expedition had become a directed route. Each step followed by the unpleasant splash of water that soaked into the carpet.
I stare at the strange scene behind the fourth door. This unusually giant room is made of blue paving stones. Some are covered in black scratches, as if from the claws of an animal. The dark lines between them form perfect straight lines running from the beginning to the end of the room. In the middle they outline what appears to be a cube that descends from the ceiling and stops about a metre and a half above the floor. I walk slowly, trying to spot any indication of a way out. The water before was obviously coming out of this cubic structure reasembling an inverted swimming pool. Perfectly clear water is stuck to the ceiling and shows no signs of obeying the rules of gravity. It mocks those rules, calmly levitating above my head. At its edge is a pool ladder. And yet a way out is found. There is no ceiling in that cube! Instead, I can see the presence of another room above it.
I exhaust the last of my strength trying to swim through the levitating water. I was able to do it, but I cannot catch my breath. My vision is pitch black and my muscles refuse to continue the expedition. The brain has long since given up trying to comprehend the logic of this house. Disoriented and miserable. There is that clanking again, much louder than before. Outer blinds opens to bring in the light.
A strange oval window lets in daylight, revealing absolutely nothing. I find myself in a long concrete corridor, which is separated from absolute meaninglessness only by this one window. The water-filled cube has changed in size, shrinking several times to compensate for its breach from the large pool room into this long but very narrow passage. Its not wide enough on this side to swim back through. As I approach the window, the copper blinds slowly close with every step. Residence rejects my attempt at this particular way to get out.
A rescue or yet another misery? Another door opens behind me. But I recognize the room on the other side. Those are the empty shelves and storage bins in the impoverished storage room. As I walk through the only available door, it is surprising to discover that I am in the same place where I began my expedition of the Residence. Back into the entrance hall I go.
There I see Richard standing with the wine in his hand.
“How long have you been waiting for me?” He must have considered me lost a long time ago. But my question came as a surprise.
“Waited? Not even a minute. You were just in the tool room.” His eyes glanced thoughtfully toward the storage room. “What were you looking for anyway?”
“Is there anything about this house I don’t know?”
“Lots of stuff.” He smiled. “Come, let’s sit down and I’ll describe everything I had constructed here.”
Still disoriented, I had no idea where he was leading me. The last part of the expedition led to a massive aniline leather sofa. There he made himself comfortable, while I was content to sit on the ottoman so that I could get up and leave at any moment. He was describing many of the projects from the original building plan of the Residence, which he laid out on the table in front of us, showing me vividly where everything was located. So proud was he to have brought this mysterious monument to life. But nothing about a bright-shining glass-walled room with devices, nor nothing about a gravity-defying pool. He only mentioned one such obscure room that served as an art atelier. The only exhibit so far, he said, was a single huge copper pendulum that some unknown artist had assembled from surplus material after the roof of the house had been finished. As he began to talk about it, I heard the clanging sound again. It echoed through the house, very faintly in this part where we were sitting. It was making me nervous, but Richard did not react to it in any way. He went on describing his house in a very enthusiastic manner and I endured listening to him. While finishing up the final parts of the conversation, I tried to look calm on the outside.
After this whole experience, I stopped seeing him. Soon after I left the NER group and abandoned all my ambitions to acquire a large house. There is still a question mark in my mind as to what exactly happened that day. Was it just a hallucination caused by initial euphoria, or was the pendulum actually a functioning heart of a living building? The answer to that question is unknown to this day. But I do know one thing for sure: The love for large houses can outgrow its bearers and possess them in a way you cannot even imagine.