[ WP ] `` The elevator had an extra button , but instead of a number , it was only labeled with a question mark . ''

He stepped into the elevator, just as he always had, onto a spot slightly less than an arm's length away from the buttons, a spot well worn by his and others' feet. 
 
 As his gaze swept the rows of buttons, it was drawn inexorably toward a button that had always been there, probably before he had. He had looked at it every day, sometimes pondering it, sometimes ignoring it, but never pressing it. But something deep within him knew that today, he had no choice. 
 
 He took a breath, looked at himself in the mirrored walls, straightened his tie, then extended a hand and firmly pushed the question mark nestled just below the button for floor 42. 
 
 A feeling of certainty enveloped him. He looked up, at the endless copies of himself reflected in the parallel mirrors. How many times he'd stared at them in the elevator... but today, they were different. The ones closest to him looked the most like him, but the farther away they got, the more different they became-and suddenly he was flying over them. Some were wearing suits, like he was, but now some were wearing overalls, or had longer hair, or had things in their hands. And now they were n't in the elevator anymore-he soared over beaches and mountains and deep caves and seas and always saw himself-sometimes with teeth gritted against the elements, sometimes laughing wildly, sometimes utterly immobile and bored out of his mind, but always recognizably him. 
 
 But now, intermittently, he did n't recognize who he saw-sometimes he flew by women, or children, and the landscapes became less and less familiar, and he flew faster and faster. 
 
 And then it was n't landscapes flashing by, but entire planets hurtling past him. Stars, vast clouds of gas, then galaxies went flying by, faster and faster, and now all he got was impressions-colors he could n't describe, shapes that seemed utterly impossible, and under it all the deepest uncertainty he had ever felt-an abyss he had glanced into on occasion, but was now tumbling into, faster and faster, and- 
 
 And then he was kneeling on the floor of the elevator, his finger hovering just an inch from the question mark, and shaking.
