Escher Room

The protagonist of The PPC Computer Game finds herself in an Escher Room.

An Escher Room is a room in HQ where the dimensions in the room and gravity have gone all twisty, similar to M.C. Escher's famous mindboggling painting, Relativity, or the "illusionary maze" from the film Labyrinth, which was based on the Escher painting. It's generally good advice to hurry through these rooms as quickly as you can lest you start feeling nauseous or begin to fall upwards.

The Armory and the Cafeteria may be located off an Escher Room, and/or the lobby of FicPsych. At least until the stairs change. As with anything else in Headquarters, if you expect to find a thing in a certain place, it probably won't be there, and you stand a much higher chance of getting lost in a place where gravity is more of a suggestion than a fact.

There was a battle in an Escher Room during the 2008 Mary Sue Invasion, alluded to during the memorial party held on the one-year anniversary of the Invasion, where fifty agents tried to make a stand against hundreds of Sues. The agents fought valiantly, but they were eventually overwhelmed. The only survivor was Roy Berger, Agent Troy's partner.

Appearances

Listed in order of publication date.

• "Techno-Dann's Backstory" by Delta Juliette, c. December 2003
  • Dann literally stumbles into an Escher Room on his way to the Armory.
• PPC: The Playscript, Episode II by Huinesoron, c. March 2005
  • Alex Orange, Mortic Wentway, and the Daisy attempt to navigate an Escher Room using a prototype map of Headquarters. It goes about as well as you'd expect.
• The Reorganisation by Huinesoron and Vemi, March 25, 2005–March 1, 2007
  • Imbolc Telyan has an encounter with Ontic Laison in an Escher Room.
• The PPC Computer Game by Huinesoron, July 19, 2007
  • The Escher Room from "Techno-Dann's Backstory" is a location in the game.
• "In which M*A*S*H Is Defiled by a Sue" by Ekyl, April 30, 2009
  • Marcus opens a door from the Cafeteria into an Escher Room, apparently also the same one as in "Techno-Dann's Backstory."
• "Going Postal" by Phobos, September 26, 2010
  • Durotar and Kur'nak travel through an Escher Room on the way to FicPsych.
• "The Long Night of Agent Supernumerary" by Neshomeh, December 16, 2019
  • Henry Robinson leads Agent Supernumerary on a chase through an Escher Room.
• "Ditching Wings" by Ekwy, October 31, 2022