The Lakeshore Hotel, a 40-story residential tower in the upper Shelf District, was constructed in 2161. Room 322 appears on every floor plan. It is present in the original architectural drawings, the construction blueprints, the fire safety evacuation routes, and the building's digital twin maintained by the management system. It is assigned to the third floor, between Rooms 321 and 323. It has a room number, a door, and a keycard lock.

Room 322 does not exist in the corridor. Rooms 321 and 323 share a wall. There is no gap. There is no sealed door. There is no evidence that a room was ever between them. The wall between 321 and 323 has been scanned — it is solid ferrocrete, continuous, with no void space. Room 322 is on every plan and in no corridor, and it has been this way since the building opened.

The room has been sealed — conceptually, since it cannot be physically sealed — for forty years. In that time, seven maintenance workers have been assigned to inspect it as part of routine building surveys. All seven have requested reassignment after the inspection. None will discuss what they found, because none of them can articulate how they accessed a room that does not appear in the hallway. Their inspection logs note standard findings — functional plumbing, intact walls, normal temperature — for a room that should not have any of these things because it should not be there.

The hotel's management AI includes Room 322 in its occupancy calculations. It has never assigned a guest to the room. When queried about why, the system returns: "Room 322 is reserved." It has been reserved since 2161. No reservation record exists. No one has checked in. The room is waiting for a guest who has not yet arrived, in a space that the building's own corridors refuse to contain.