All Mickey knew was that it was dark.

He walked into a Door, and like usual, it was different on the other side. Sometimes cabinets became garages. Sometimes caves became mansions. You never knew, with Doors. That was part of the challenge, and the appeal.

Mickey knew he wanted to become a Visitor the moment his sister came back from her first Walk. Eyes aglow, she told of all the things she’d seen, things forbidden to a commoner like them these days. She had the sight, so she could see Doors, same as all other Visitors. It is what made it possible for them to see, and thus use, Doors.

Mickey kept squinting up his eyes and nothing would come. He was afeared he’d be stuck like so many others of his classmates, at home. Then it came, the sight. Round his two decade mark it came, a twinkle at first, and then more and more, like an old-time florescent bulb. Not like he’d seen one of those for real, mind you. Electricity of all kinds was banned to his kind. Too good for the likes of them.

He could use some electricity right now. Dark as inside a whale, it was, but thankfully not as smelly. He hoped it wasn’t going to be three days here before he could find his way out.

“Oy! You there!”

Damn. A guard.

Not Quality by that accent, for sure. Just some commoner hired to do the dirty work for a few coins a day and whatever table scraps they felt like tossing his way.

Mickey had been spotted but he couldn’t figure out how. He still couldn’t see at all. The last Room he’d come from was in a lighthouse, and it was the middle of the day. Bright enough not to need all those windows a lighthouse has, and bright enough to ruin his night blindness too.

Maybe the guard lived here, wherever here was. Maybe that was why he could see in this murky dark. Not like it seemed to be much like living.

Mickey decided to appeal to an equal.

“Hey, mate! It’s just me, a regular bloke like you. No need to raise the rattle, you see? We can work this out between us men, right?”

“Huh!” grunted the guard. “Visitors ain’t men!” he said with extra emphasis on the “ain’t”.

By now they both had a good sense of where the other was based on the location of their voices. The guard was coming closer. Mickey ran away from the guard’s voice as fast as he could, stumbling over boxes and crates all the way.

He was getting tired of running, but it was better than jail. Or the judge. The Door found him before he saw it. He tripped and was through before he even realized it.

He knew he was in a warehouse clear on the other side of the country, so it was better lit. The guard, not being a Visitor, couldn’t follow. Maybe that was why he was so upset. He was jealous. Well, it might also have something to do with some Visitors being treasure hunters. All the more reason to hire a guard. So he should be grateful, right? It was because of Visitors that he had a job at all.

All parents between the ages of 30 and 50 vanished overnight 10 years ago back one terrible spring. One night they were there, the next morning they weren’t. The first morning it was about 200 of them. The next, a few more than that. The next, even more.

Panic erupted, as you would expect. Some people stayed up all night. Some fled to the countryside, like folks did in plague times. Some went to confession and sold all their worldly goods. It didn’t matter. If you were a parent under 50 you disappeared.

The children remained.
Those who had never had children remained.
And the Gran-parents remained too.

The new society wasn’t very social at first, and now, 10 years on, it still wasn’t. The Gran-parents went into poverty supporting their gran-children. Their nests were suddenly full and their pockets were suddenly empty.

The childless were like landed nobility but less polite about it. Styling themselves as Lords and ladies, like the gentry in centuries past, they banded together and called themselves The Quality. They found themselves at the top of the hill like obnoxious schoolchildren. They made up Rules to make sure they stayed at the top of the hill, too.

The only thing was, there were Rules they didn’t know about. This game was a game for two, and the Visitors had the other half of the board.