Oxygénia

above the other door four vertical lines. Curious, he entered number
Three. Just like in the other building, he got into a huge hall, but of
a totally different kind from the one which had led to the dining and
the sleeping halls. Here, one went from the entrance through
swinging glass doors in some kind of storage room. The swinging
doors were made from some sort of frosted glass, too, and above
each door was a little picture with a different symbol. The first plate
showed a shoe, on the second door was a plate with an overall, the
third showed a puppet. Peter was pushed through the door with the
shoe by the mass of people who flooded inside. The storage room
was giant in size. On seemingly endless shelves there were grey
shoes with a profiled sole, made of a rubber-like leatherette, and the
same model on all shelves. The shoes were sorted according to their
size, right at the entrance the very small ones for children, about in
the center of the room ones which could have fitted Peter. Those
who entered asked no one something, neither interest nor curiosity
was apparent on their faces. They took their size from the shelf, put
the new shoes on and threw the old, worn-off ones in a chute
beneath the shelf. And then they left the storage the same way they
had entered, with slow steps.
Peter stopped at a shelf and took a pair of shoes.
An alarm sounded. Stunned, he put the shoes back. He heard a
voice. He switched on his translator and got the command in Earth
language:
"Not your size. Please move on."
Only now he realised that in front of the shelves, a grey rubber
mat was attached. People walked on this mat, and they stopped at
the spot where a small indicator lamp lit up. Obviously, some
technology inside the mat measured the size of the foot, and as
soon as one approached the area with the right size of shoes, the
device indicated the fitting shoes could be taken here.
Peter went on and watched the rubber mat. Two rows on, the
yellow indicator lamp lit up. Peter took a pair of shoes and tried
them. They fitted. He disposed off his old shoes which he had
brought from Earth. The new shoes did not only fit perfectly, but
were also elastic and comfortable. He left the storage. No one talked
to him, no one charged him something for the shoes.
With searching for the shoes, he had spent a full hour. No, he
didn't come here for that in the first place. He needed to find a
staircase, get up onto the flat roof and activate his radio again.
He tried the other doors, but came back out only moments later.
He didn't find a staircase anywhere. Even in the rooms where the
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