This is the story of a man named Stanley.
Stanley worked for a company in a big building where he was Employee #427.
Employee #427's job was simple: he sat at his desk in room 427 and he pushed buttons on a keyboard.
Orders came to him through a monitor on his desk, telling him what buttons to push, how long to push them, and in what order.
This is what Employee #427 did every day of every month of every year, and although others might have considered it soul rending,
Stanley relished every moment the orders came in, as though he had been made exactly for this job.
And Stanley was happy.
And then one day, something very peculiar happened.
Something that would forever change Stanley;
something he would never quite forget.
He had been at his desk for nearly an hour when he realized that not one single order had arrived on the monitor for him to follow.
No one had shown up to give him instructions, call a meeting, or even say 'hi.' Never in all his years at the company had this happened, this complete isolation.
Something was very clearly wrong. Shocked, frozen solid, Stanley found himself unable to move for the longest time.
But as he came to his wits and regained his senses, he got up from his desk and stepped out of his office.
.
.
.
Oh, and uh, I guess this is where Stanley felt he needed to be right now, in this little hallway. Here, with no distractions, to study room 417. Not to actually enter it, no no no no, that would be far too forward. Stanley wanted to know it from the outside - to see it not just with his eyes, but with his heart. He would know room 417 as no man or woman had ever known an office before. That ladder over there! *gasp* Oh, and that little picture of a horizon or something! It's all just a never ending parade of joy for Stanley.