Empty

We made our way into the vast building, neither of knew quite what to expect.

Upon entering, we were surprised to discover the stillness and sense of undisturbed reality.  There was no graffiti and no piles of trash one might expect from twenty years of fallow existence.  There was also none of the dust or decay we had expected to find from that long a period of abandonment.

That wasn’t to say everything looked as it did the day the building was occupied.  There were obvious signs of hurried departure.  File boxes half-full of client documents and shipping information lay semi-stacked against a wall in the entrance hallway.  A pile of magazines lay strewn across the floor next to the remains of once-plush leather waiting chairs.

Entering what appeared to be a main reception office, we discovered something interesting.  

There was, against all odds, apparently power flowing into the building.  A few of the outdated electronics were glowing with active LEDs even as they sat strewn across desks and even onto the dusty carpet.  An early digital answering machine – sitting askew on the edge of a deck – blinked its message of ‘memory full’.  There was an early computer, a 5 ½” disk sticking halfway out of its drive, seemingly forgotten in the rush to exit the building.

Something seemed off.

The layout of the offices was not typical.  The usual square and rectangular layout was broken up by numerous walls that branched out at odd angles and forced the offices to strange floor plans.  The back wall of one office had four locked doors in it.  Closer inspection showed one of the doors to be broken - and it opened with little force.  A large tunnel, as round as we were tall, led down and to the left.  The surface of the tunnel was slightly too steep to be comfortably navigated by a person.  The material which the tunnel was made of also seemed unnatural and the white / gray surface easily crumbled.  

Some light could be seen coming from beyond the curve of the tunnel.  Not the yellow light of day - but a pulsing blue light which reflected off the odd material of the tunnel in a hynopotic way.

11/8/2018 (371)