the missing floors

Every time they went on vacation, Emily would explore all the floors of the Hotel they stayed in. She was very puzzled the first time they went to America to find there was no floor between 1 and -1, grounds for excitement. She was delighted that there were very rarely any hotels with a number 13 showing on the lift buttons, sometimes cunningly hidden by grouping the buttons in dozens or half-dozens.

Then there were the names used instead of numbers for special floors, such as the Mezzanine, Penthouse, or Basement, Attic, even Atrium. She knew she should not go to the basement, and definitely never visit the attic either.

Sometimes, these seems like substitutes for the missing numbers, but not always She wondered if the floors had character, she joked to herself “character flaws”.Emily dreamed of visiting the missing floors, and her dreams, she has a book full of 24 sticky signs, each with a Greek letter on. 

somehow, she is able to read them, even though she has never studied greek, ancient or modern.

Perhaps she can match the letter to the floor. From now on, she will try to find the room she wishes to stay in, and she will make it so that that room was number 6,6,6, no matter where it really is. Sometimes, she must take the first lift to the top floor, and then walk down the corridor to the south-south-east, and it would be the 3rd door on the left. Other times,  she would ask for room four, for example when staying in downtown San Francisco in one of those boutique Chinese hostels.

The neat thing about choosing this room is that there would never be any min-bar charges. Indeed, there were no charges at all. The downside was that this also meant no room service. Ah, well, you couldn’t have everything. At least there were all the TV stations in creation, sent from heaven, but also down here in the other place.