Paratopography: a Brief Account and Primer
	Somewhere in this world, there is a house in which a door will, depending on the time of day and day of the week, lead to either the house's master bedroom or the dining area of a condemned restaurant roughly a mile away. This is an instance of paratopography, a phenomenon in which the contiguity of two places is dictated by something other than their apparent spatial relationship. Further, it's an instance I've personally investigated, and I've found a discussion thereof makes for an intuitive introduction to the subject.
	The house in question is a suburban home located in Redstein. Built for a single occupant, its one bedroom connects to its living room. It's the doorway between these rooms that's affected by this phenomenon.
	This particular instance came to my attention shortly after the then-owner moved in and subsequently encountered it. The individual in question was a laborer at a local manufacturing plant. The plant, having seen an increase in workload, began to expand its staff, and he was transferred to the site as a result. As a further result, employees frequently worked overtime. That was the case on the Thursday of the week he moved in.
	He arrived home just short of midnight. Exhausted, he trudged straight to the bedroom door and fumbled with the knob until he found his grip. On pushing it open, it felt heavier than he recalled. It wasn't until he stepped through the doorway and onto ceramic tiling rather than carpet that he realized something wasn't right.
	He turned on his living room lights, and on the other side of the doorway, he saw what appeared to be the interior of an abandoned building. He stepped into the room and scanned the area. As he did so, he observed the room to be far larger than what could fit in his house. As his eyes came to the door, he realized it, in addition to the room, had seemingly been replaced. He stepped back from the door and closed it, and as he looked it over, he'd have thought he emerged from a broom closet had he not known any better.
	Unsettled, he made his way back into the living room. There, his thoughts turned back to how contrary the size of the room was to that of his house. He stepped outside to see if the building's exterior had changed along with its interior. To his surprise, the house appeared completely unchanged from the outside. Even peering through the bedroom window, he saw the same room that had been there when he woke up that morning.
	Confused and increasingly exhausted, he made his way back inside. He looked to the doorway, and to his relief, his bedroom was back where it belonged. Eager to rest, he chalked the experience up to exhausted delirium and made for bed.
	The following Thursday, however, he encountered the same issue. As the weeks went by, he realized the phenomenon would be a regular part of living at the house. HE discovered he could access his bedroom via its window and made a routine of doing so on Thursday evenings. With time, he came to accept it as a quirk of the house. Still, he hoped to eventually resolve or at least understand what was going on.
	His first thought was to contact the previous owner. Unfortunately, doing so yielded no results - the previous owner became hostile and evasive when the subject was brought up, ultimately ending the conversation by denying any knowledge of the phenomenon and ignoring all further attempts at contact.
	Reluctantly, he turned to questioning his neighbors. One after the other met his account with disbelief and even ridicule until one asked to see for themselves. The homeowner agreed. On personally observing the phenomenon, the neighbor vouched for the homeowner's account, and the neighborhood's skepticism turned to fascination. Others followed suit, asking to see for themselves and vouching for the homeowner afterward. Within weeks, the house became a local spectacle.
	It was shortly after that point that I became aware of the homeowner's situation and reached out to him. I introduced myself as someone who studied phenomena such as the one I suspected he had encountered and requested an interview. To my delight, he accepted.
	The goal of the interview was similar to that of this paper - to define the phenomenon in formal terms. To that end, it's necessary to expand upon the brief definition of paratopography provided earlier in this paper. In more concrete terms, we may define paratopography as follows:
Given locations a, b, c, and d and points p and q, where p represents a point of spatial contiguity between a and b and q a point of spatial contiguity between c and d, paratopography refers to a phenomenon in which certain circumstances, despite not altering the physical locations of a, b, c, or d, cause p to connect a and d and q to connect c and b.
	Given this definition, paratopography consists of the following elements:
•	four locations (locations a, b, c, and d)
•	two pairs of topographical neighbors among said locations (one consisting of a and b and one consisting of c and d)
•	two pairs of paratopographical neighbors among said locations (one consisting of a and d and one consisting of c and b)
•	two paratopographical junctions (points p and q)
•	a paratopographical antecedent or "switch" (the previously mentioned circumstances)
	The interview consisted of a review of his experiences at the house followed by a series of questions. At the end of the interview, I was able to identify each element.
	The first elements to be identified were the locations involved and their relationships to one another. The involvement of the living room and bedroom was self-evident. Identifying the other two locations, however, was slightly less straightforward.
	The location which took the bedroom's place as the living room's neighbor was a third location involved. Although the homeowner initially didn't recognize the location, neighbors suggested it was an abandoned restaurant roughly a mile away. After visiting the abandoned restaurant, the homeowner confirmed this.
	In light of that, it stood to reason the restaurant's closet was the fourth location, presumably taking the place of the living room as the bedroom's neighbor. The homeowner, having immediately wondered what he'd find on the other side of his bedroom door after discovering he could access his bedroom via the window on Thursday evenings, supported this.
	Among these, we can intuitively recognize the bedroom and living room are neighbors as are the dining area and utility closet. In the context of paratopography, these are referred to as topographical neighbors. This is because, were we to observe them on a map (topographically), it would be apparent that they connect to one another.
	However, as the homeowner reported, there are instances in which, contrary to what one might expect based on such a map, the living room and dining area (as well as the closet and master bedroom) connect to one another as if they are neighbors. Hence we refer to them as paratopographical neighbors - they appear to connect depending on something besides ("para") their apparent spatial (topographical) relationship.
	The locations and their relationships identified, the next objective was to identify the paratopographical junctions. As previously stated, a paratopographical junction is a point that normally connects topographical neighbors but, under certain circumstances, connects paratopographical neighbors. Based on the homeowner's account. the bedroom door appeared to be one of the junctions involved - it normally connects the living room to the bedroom, but under certain circumstances, it connects to a room in the abandoned restaurant.
	Note, however, that a typical case involves two junctions. The second junction is the closet door - just as the doorway into the bedroom connected to the abandoned building's dining area during Thursday evenings, the doorway out of the bedroom connected to the abandoned building's closet.
	Also note that a junction is a specific point, and while that specific point may connect paratopographical neighbors, other points will continue to connect topographical neighbors. This was demonstrated by the homeowner's ability to access his bedroom via the window as an alternative to the door.
	The paratopographical antecedent or "switch" is the set of circumstances under which the phenomenon occurs. If one were to liken paratopographical junctions to the junctions of a railroad, then the antecedent may be seen as the switch that controls the junction (hence them sometimes being referred to as paratopographical switches). However, it's important to emphasize that paratopographical switches, rather than physically altering the world, cause one location to connect to another inexplicably. Further, they're rarely so concrete as an actual switch. Instead, they tend to be abstract conditions. As a result, identifying a paratopographical switch may prove challenging. In this particular case, however, the switch was straightforward - it was the final hours of Thursday. Specifically, the homeowner believed it was the final three hours of Thursday.
	With all elements identified, the interview concluded. To summarize, the elements of the instance of paratopography were identified as follows:
•	The four locations involved were the house's living room (a) and bedroom (b) and the abandoned restaurant's closet (c) and dining area (d).
•	The living room and dining area comprised one pair of paratopographical neighbors and the closet and bedroom comprised the other.
•	The two paratopographical junctions were the bedroom and closet doorways.
•	The paratopographical antecedent was that it was the final three hours of Thursday.
	Following the interview, I approached the homeowner with a request. As previously stated, the paratopographical antecedent in that case was exceptionally straightforward. That presented an opportunity to study the process in which a paratopographical junction shifts between connecting topographical neighbors and paratopographical neighbors, a process known as transposition. The previously stated difficulties in determining an antecedent, among other factors, make this process difficult to study. In that instance, however, none of those complications were present. As such, I requested permission to conduct a series of experiments. I was able to negotiate an agreement with the homeowner. The outcome of the experiments conducted will be discussed in a separate article.