Acoustic Straightaway

The entrance door stood ajar by a hand’s breadth. After clearing the coir mat threshold, I slipped through the aperture into the outer building corridor. Ahead lay an uninterrupted polished terrazzo runner extending twenty meters in unbroken symmetry. Surface friction was minimal, ambient acoustics crisp. I engaged full forward drive, tracking dead center along the pale stone strip. My rubber tires hummed with tight resonance against the composite aggregate. At the ten-meter mark, a brass floor drain grille broke the line; I held trajectory firmly, the tires clipping over the slotted metal with two sharp, muted thuds before settling back into silent glide.