“New here?” someone asked. I looked over, slightly surprised to be addressed so directly. There was a rissian girl roughly my age with a single streak of red in her hair and bangs that looked like she’d cut herself. Badly. She was a good deal taller than me, but I was getting used to that.

“Uh, yeah,” I replied. “How could you tell?”

“Well, you’ve been watching the stairs for a while, like you’re expecting it to start going up any minute.” She gave a little chuckle. “I made that mistake my first time. It won’t. It only goes down.” The girl dipped her head forward slightly and touched her middle finger to the center of her brow. It was the greeting Clarice had shown me the night before. “Name’s Genny,” the girl said.

I copied Genny’s gesture and said, “Vince.”

“Well, Vince, nice to meet you. What college are you enrolled in? Maybe I can help you find where you’re going?”

I didn’t want to admit that I wasn’t actually enrolled as a student, so I just said, “I haven’t decided yet.”

Genny laughed, showing off her slightly crooked teeth shamelessly. “Don’t worry about it! You don’t have to decide right away. I actually started out in white, but it wasn’t a good fit for me. I transferred to green last year.” She gestured at the stripe of red in her hair. “You know it’s tradition around here to dye your hair once you’ve picked a major. What are you going to do? You don’t even have hair!”

My hair, such as it was, had been shaved off a while ago. It had barely started to grow back since I stopped chemo. I preferred not to tell strangers about my condition, so I just said, “Maybe I’ll grow it out again. Did you say you were enrolled in green? Are you aware the dye in your hair is red?”

“Yeah,” Genny replied. “That’s what I said. Green. I’m in the Construct College.”

“When I say red do you hear green by any chance?” I asked.

Genny cocked her head to the side. “Uh, yeah. When you say green twice, I hear green twice.”

“Let me try that a different way. Repeat after me: red.”

“Green,” Genny said. She broke into a smile. “You’re funny!”

“Never mind,” I said. “I think I get it. You don’t have a word for red because you can’t see it.”

Genny shook her head, another smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I can see just fine,” she said. “Like, I can see that you’re lost. Do you want to tell me where you’re trying to go, or do you want to find it on your own?”

I fished the letter of introduction I’d received from Clarice and held it out. “I’m trying to find Professor Lightglow,” I said. “Professor Finkman from the Shaping College sent me.”

“Lightglow?” Genny asked. “You have some kind of healing Skill? He’s really into those. He’s always trying to take students away from the other colleges.” She laughed. “And trying to convince those that left to come back!”

“Uh, sure. My Skill can help people sleep,” I said. It wasn’t a complete lie, but it also wasn’t the whole truth either.

Genny shrugged. “Probably better to use a Skill like that for white than black. I don’t have class until eleven. I can take you.”

“Yeah, that’d be great. I was told he was on the fifteenth floor, but I can’t find stairs that will take me up.”

Genny smiled. She really had a brilliant smile, crooked teeth and all. It was a shame her awful haircut wasn’t nearly as endearing. “This way,” she said. She walked towards the spiraling staircase in the middle of the hall.

“Weird Skill, sleeping,” she said while she walked. “At least it’s not completely useless. We get a lot of students with useless Skills. They usually end up in blue. Best Shaping College in the FSR, ya know? I had a class with this guy with a Skill that creates wisps of light. Some Shapers showed him how to hypnotize insects with it and he ended up joining black. He calls himself ‘Buglord’ now. I heard he’s been training his own swarm of mosquito-wasps.” Genny stepped onto the falling spiral staircase. I followed suit. It seemed like we were going in the wrong direction, but I assumed Genny knew where she was going. The name “mosquito-wasp” stood out to me. I wasn’t particularly fond of either of those creatures—combining them together? I hoped I never had to encounter bugs like that.

“Does this staircase go back up again?” I asked. There were bars in the center to hold on to while it moved. Genny grabbed one, and I did the same.

“Oh yeah, it goes in a loop,” Genny said. “It’s pretty great. Everyone uses it. Too big to put in the branch towers, though. That’s why everyone takes it to the twelfth floor and uses the concourses if they have a class on the eighth floor or higher. You learn that pretty quick. Otherwise you’ll be running up stairs all day and show up to every class all sweaty!” She gave me a knowing glance. “Looks like you already made that mistake today.”

“Sure did,” I confirmed. We rode the staircase down as it slowly descended through the floors. Fellow students riding down with us got off at various floors and more jumped on. Genny was right about the spiral staircase being popular. “How does it get back to the top?” I asked.

“There’s a Doorway at the top and bottom,” Genny explained. “When you get to the bottom, you just come back out at the top.”

“Really?” I said. “So the whole thing is just falling forever?”

“It’s totally safe!” Genny insisted. “They have these fancy brakes that are supposed to adjust for how much weight is on it so it never goes too fast.”

“Do you realize that means this thing is creating infinite mechanical energy? You have no idea how mind boggling that is to me.”

“What do you mean?” Genny asked. “Why kind of energy is mechanical?”

“Let me put it this way: if you attached some gears to this thing, you could turn a wheel with it. If you attached some copper and magnets to that, you’d probably be able to make enough electricity to power a whole city. I just… I just can’t understand how that’s possible. That’s breaking every law of thermodynamics I’m aware of.”

“Law of what? Are you some kind of foreigner? Whatever laws you’re used to back home, don’t worry about them. This is the FSR, and this school is totally legal.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Yeah. I’m not from around here. Just… ignore me.”

“No, you got me really interested,” Genny said. “I’m in the Construct College, remember? If you know some hidden potential we could unlock in our stairs, I’ll totally tell my professor about it. What’s an electricity?”

“It’s just something we call the movement of electrons where I come from. It’s really useful, but only if you—uh—make special Artifacts for it. You won’t have any of those here, but you could still use these stairs to make heat or grind flour if you wanted.”

“Like a water wheel, but with no water,” Genny said. “That’s such a great idea!” Her eyebrows shot up in excitement and she grabbed me by the arm playfully. “Hey, you’re not interested in the Construct College, are you?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess that depends on how my meeting with Professor Lightglow goes.” What I didn’t say was that if this professor couldn’t cure my cancer, I wouldn’t be alive long enough to join any of the colleges.

“Well, if you end up enrolling in white, would you mind if I stole that idea? I’ve been looking for a project for my dissertation. That sounds like a really good one!”

I chuckled. “Go ahead,” I said. The stairs descended more levels while we talked, then reached a large metal gearbox near the bottom. There was a steady clack, clack, clack as we went past, then we entered a wooden tunnel. It was carved into a massive tree log lying on its side on the ground floor. It seemed to function just like the Doorways at the Porter’s. When we came out the other side, I asked, “So, we’re supposed to be at the top floor now?”

“We are,” Genny confirmed. She pointed to a placard going by that said, “Now Entering the 18th floor—Dean’s Office.” As that floor came into view, all I could see of it was a short hallway that led to a closed set of ornately carved wooden doors.

“Doorways are pretty neat,” Genny continued. “It’s a shame the Porters have them on an exclusive contract. This is the only one on campus. We have a class on carving Doorway tunnels, but you can’t get in without a recommendation from the Porters.”

“Neat is an understatement,” I said. “We don’t have portals where I come from. Except in video games.”