The Eternal Meeting
The meeting invite was a simple, unassuming notification that popped up on my screen on a morning. It promised a quick chat, fifteen minutes tops, to discuss minor adjustments to our quarterly report formatting. That was six months ago. Today, we are still sitting in the same glass-walled conference room, and the passage of time has lost all meaning. It is hard to pinpoint exactly when the fifteen-minute chat transformed into our permanent reality. It all started when Dave, a project lead with a penchant for design, suggested that we switch our font to Helvetica. He insisted it was cleaner and more professional. Sarah, who had been with the company for ten years, immediately fired back that our corporate identity was tied to Times New Roman. That tiny disagreement spiraled into a massive, multi-day argument about what work communication actually means. We analyzed the psychology of serifs versus sans-serifs, the history of printing, and the subtle ways a font choice affects investor trust. It felt like a debate that would resolve by lunch, but the passion in the room was palpable. We were shouting about legibility while the sun crawled across the carpet, turning from bright morning light to the long, amber shadows of late afternoon. By the third day, the initial annoyance had shifted into a strange, survivalist camaraderie. We stopped checking our email notifications. The constant pinging of Slack messages started to feel like the sound of a distant war in a country we no longer inhabited. We started ordering pizza in bulk, stacking the greasy cardboard boxes in the corner like bricks. The smell of cold pepperoni became our baseline, a scent that eventually faded into the background. When we got tired, we crawled under the heavy oak table, using our laptop bags as pillows. The office outside had grown eerily quiet. I remember the silence creeping in on the first that day. I peeked through the glass partition, expecting to see people moving about their desks, but it was like someone had hit a pause button on the entire floor. The coffee machine in the breakroom eventually ran dry, so we got creative. We discovered that the leaves of the large, fake rubber plant in the corner could be steeped in hot water from the electric kettle to create a bitter, muddy tea. It kept us awake when the fluorescent hum of the ceiling lights threatened to lull us into a permanent stupor. We stopped trying to leave when the lights in the rest of the office flickered and died. The building was clearly shutting down around us, but our room remained lit by the projector. We became our own little civilization. Our hierarchy dissolved. There were no more managers or subordinates, just survivors of a font-based catastrophe. We formed small, temporary committees just to decide who deserved the last slice of pepperoni or how to distribute the remaining packets of sugar we had scavenged from the supply closet. We even drafted a formal constitution for our room, pinning it to the whiteboard with blue tack. It felt like we were our own country, disconnected from the world. We had strict rules about how to share the dwindling supply of lukewarm water and who got the best spot near the power outlet. Our boss, who had originally called the meeting, seemed to lose his grip on reality first. He spent hours pacing the perimeter of the glass room, his eyes wide and unblinking. He claimed he saw a way out through the ceiling tiles and disappeared into the vents, hoping to forage for food in the neighboring departments. He never came back, and we stopped checking for him. At first, there was a moment of panic, but then we just collectively decided to carry on with the agenda. We kept the meeting going not because we had to, but because it was the only anchor we had left. The original agenda, that fateful slide about font weights and kerning, was still projected onto the screen, glowing with a soft, hum-filled light. We stopped talking about professional standards somewhere around month two. Instead, we started sharing our deepest secrets and the stories of our past lives before this office. Sarah told us about the summer she spent painting in Italy, and Dave confessed he never actually liked design; he just liked being right. The walls of the room felt like they were shrinking, yet the intimacy grew deeper with every passing hour. I often look at my watch and forget what day it is, or even what year. The days bleed into the nights, marked only by the flickering of the projector bulb. Sometimes I find myself staring at that same slide about fonts, mesmerized by the Helvetica lettering. It has become a strange, static monument to our existence. I don't know what is waiting for me outside those glass doors. Maybe there is nothing left. Maybe the company folded months ago, and we are just the ghosts of a project that never quite finished. But when I look around at my colleagues, at the makeshift teacups and the pizza boxes, I feel a strange sense of belonging. We share stories of our childhoods, the food we miss, and the people we once loved, all while the projection casts a cool, digital glow over our faces. The meeting is our life now. It is all I know. It is enough for me.