Don't get your hopes up. Get your hopes up. Don't want it to be more than it is; don't think too much about what it is; research it and find out as much as you can.
Maybe it's just a store, maybe it's just the gift shop you exit through, maybe it's a carefully crafted and curated mockery of capitalism. Maybe that's enough. Is it overpriced? Don't think about that. There's a store in San Francisco that sells pirate gear, there's a store in New York that sells superhero stuff, this is a store that sells pareidolia peppers and that's the same thing, except what goes on behind the curtain is different. Well, it's not a curtain. For you it's a gardening section; for your sister it was strangely melted soda in a refrigerator door, and behind that an office full of clues. You forgot to ask your son and your parents where they came through. Later you went out through the refrigerator and up through a t-shirt display that reminded you of a story (or possibly a thing that happened?) of hiding behind a clothes rack. Probably it was something you read in a book. You climbed the stairs and emerged through a file cabinet and started again.
There's a story that starts in the produce department of a man whose daughter is sending messages from a cornfield except it's not his daughter, it's a manifestation of his wishes. The story continues (after the gardening department) as an older woman (your age) meeting a younger woman in something that looks like a music video or actually more like a Jodorowsky film. There are no words. You want to watch it all, but it is very long and you feel like you'll never see everything if you look at anything too long.
Once you spent 30 of your 120 Scottish minutes very happily puttering about in empty rooms on the wrong floor, wondering vaguely where everyone had gone, enjoying yourself very much but kind of missing the point. No regrets because you had another 120 minutes later and however you spend your time you usually have a good time except when you don't, and this was a good time. This feels like that. A vagueness, a sense that there's more that you should be doing but an overall contentment with what you have. There was a pharmacy with herbs in jars there, and you stole a piece of candy.
There are projections. There's a teenager's bedroom with pictures of cute boys on the wall and through the wall a passageway with a rope you use to climb up the rocks. There's a hut with herbs in it and this also reminds you of that wrong floor. There's a factory worker with a flashlight who tells you there's a knock knock joke with seven parts. Well that happened later. There's a room with a strobe light that takes your picture and you remember one of the last times you saw John and there was a strobe light, you were throwing water and watching the droplets caught in the air although of course they fell to the ground in puddles and you slid and danced in them. You stay alone in the room, disconnected with memory for a minute, and a woman comes in and dances and it feels like someone's reading your mind but of course everything is coincidence. Later you think she may have worried about you. Later you think you should have danced. There's a room where you can make music by interrupting light.
There are places where you can converse with a program and you type questions but you know they're the wrong questions. Someone before you has written FARTS FARTS FARTS and that is also the wrong question but worse. There are more and more people and it's stressful. There's hand sanitizer dispensers at every doorway and you put your hand under all of them, rubbing your hands together like a hopeful minion as you move from room to room. A henchman. A particular kind of supervillain.
There are letters to read and you read them with the same mild anxiety that you watch the films, with the pleasure of enjoying a particular medium and the concern that you're maybe supposed to be doing something more interactive. It seems like there's a story being told and you can get the point just by paying attention to the right text, the right visual images. It's possible you're missing the point. This seems like a pretty solid metaphor for how you live.
You run into your sister, who is on a quest to find someone who is missing. Your son is on a quest to find out how to be part of a corporation, or maybe destroy a corporation. This also seems like a metaphor. You meet your parents in the bar because you agreed to do so, but it is not enough and you leave again. They also have missed the part about interaction. A man handed your father a clue and your father handed it back. The amount that you are overthinking this is impressive. There is so much to think about though.
Once a woman tore out a chunk of her hair and threw it at your feet and you couldn't speak. Once a woman held your hands and made you pour poison down her throat, and her eyes rolled back in her head and still you felt like you couldn't speak. Once a man touched your cheek and went through a doorway with someone else because you didn't know to push for what you wanted. People speak here, and this is somehow more disturbing. You still don't know how to get what you want, or what you want, and whether that's more than what you have. You leave when you can't take any more.
Back at the bar, you drink gin and chew on acmella oleracea and it is numb and wonderful, you feel numb and wonderful, stunned beyond sensation. Four hours of beauty and creativity, beyond what you had expected, and now you can admit that you expected a lot. What more could you want? When you walk outside, it is like walking out of a matinee, the shock of the sunshine, except more so: the sun is hotter than it has ever been, and brighter, and still the shadows of what you wanted and what you got cling to you, days later.