At the end of the first hall begins the second hall; at the end of the second hall begins the third. At the end of the third hall begins the fourth; at the end of the fourth hall begins the fifth. The halls are, all of them, identical in every detail. That is to say, some have pictures, some carpets, some staircases, some doors, some people, some love affairs which the others lack, but these things are incapable of making them different; these things are not a part of their identity, which has nothing to do with their contents, but only the time each spends in passing through them.

When you are born, you are born in the first hall. The first hall has no special significance beyond its being the first, because you are born there. From thence, you pass onward to any other hall, all halls being equal and indiscriminate. This continues for a time, but it cannot continue for all time; there must come a moment, whether one suspects it or not, when the present hall becomes the final hall. It is at that point that one wonders why one did not accumulate more, or venture more boldly beyond these so-called halls. But the halls have no interest in such speculation; their remit, perhaps self-imposed, is simply to prove themselves adequate to the lives within them, in respect of which contract, and to prevent reason or desire from ever building upon them, they have been constructed in such a way that their containment is only an illusion. Look closely, and it becomes clear that nothing could sustain itself in such a place, since the halls were fashioned without floors.