It was a dream

The following account must’ve been a dream, right? Who breaks into unfinished buildings?

“What happens if they catch you?”

That’s what I was thinking to myself as I stood on one side of the caution tape partitioning the Carnegie Building from the south wing of the new Gateway Academic Center.

But then another voice piped up: “Fuck it, your tuition paid for it.”

So I stepped through. Scanning for security cameras, I got two very slow steps in before I heard someone moving towards me. The all-too-familiar jingle of keys on a guard’s belt loop.

“Nah, fam, I’m too young to die,” said me to me. And me stepped me right back over the tape and into a chair on the far end of Carnegie.

Fast forward fifteen minutes of anxious Facebook scrolling, and I was back up on my feet at the flimsy tape barrier. “It was a dream. A hallucination. Those weren’t actual keys,” I thought, “just my hyperactive brain spooking me into fight or flight mode.” (The night before, I’d binged all of Netflix’s The Mind, Explained. It was all very fresh.)

I stepped through again. This time, I knew not to expect cameras. So I took a deep breath and walked to the top of the incline. Someone around the corner accompanied the jangling of keys with a grossly asthmatic cough. “That shit was real,” monkey-brain me said to me. “Get the hell outta here.” Hightailing it back over the tape again, I returned to my lonely beige chair across from the bathroom to worry at my fingernails for ten minutes.

Back at the practically nonexistent barrier, I looked across the hall into a room I had never been in. (Of which there are precious few left on campus.) I was struck by the precariousness of two chairs stacked on a table. My sole remaining two neurons that were still firing at 6:30pm on a weekday sympathized with those lonely chairs. All it would take was a tiny bump of the table and—

Voices. Two of them. Shift change? Shitshitshit. I disappeared back into Carnegie, around a corner, and took off my shoes. Despite my best attempts to be sneaky, I was sounding too much like a horse.

On the next attempt, I got as far as the next hallway before motion sensors gave me away. The voices stopped. Was I going to be found out? “What do we say to the god of death? Not today.” I slunk back to the safety of Carnegie.

The voices said goodbye to one another. I heard a door close as my expectorant friend exited, leaving just me and my new silent partner to tango around the third floor. Game on.

I cracked my knuckles for a fresh start. This was it. Attempt Five. I was doing it. I was going in.

Mental pep talk? Check. One foot in front of the other? Check. Motion sensor? Check. Nobody coming? Check. Down a hall. Into an open study area. Oh, look! An open office door. And the security guard? Eh, he’s halfway around the—

My phone started ringing. I paled. No, not my phone. My phone’s in my hand. Whose phone? Alarm bells started ringing in my head. THE GUARD. My man was practically right on top of me. My head said, “RUN RUN RUN!” My legs said, “NOPE.” I hit the deck. (Camera out, of course.)

“Dear Lord. I know it’s been a while since we’ve spoken. What, since Holy Eucharist in fourth grade when they put that awful piece of dried cardboard on my tongue? But please. Hear these thoughts. If I die here, pinned behind the door to Room 323 with a security guard right outside? Please let the afterlife be full of good food. I haven’t had dinner yet, and I’m hungry.”

I let my prayer filter upwards, and slowly let my breath come back to me. He moved on.

I had already accepted that the stairs and bridge would be off-limits for today. My dance partner was guarding that hall too well. What, like someone was going to be sneaking around after hours? So with my ears screaming and my feet feeling like silly putty from all the adrenaline coursing through me, I picked another room. The last one worth visiting. The one which called my table of stacked neurons home.

Aptly, it was named the Health and Artificial Intelligence Lab. And just a stone’s throw from where I had entered… it was also where I very nearly died. (Again.)

Gingerly removing the bag of cabling propping the door open, I stepped in. I returned my makeshift doorstop and turned a corner. I peeked around another wall and BLAM-O! I was caught all alone in a large, white room in all the colors of a spring Macy’s mannequin… and my man was RIGHT on the other side of the glass. To say I stood out was an understatement. All that really registered was a flash of safety orange and reflective green from his jacket. But that’s all I needed to reflexively whirl around, clutch my phone to my chest, and start wheezing. And, of course, become painfully close with my analogous chair friends across from me.

Ten seconds went by. No doors. Twenty. No guard. Forty. Was it possible he hadn’t seen me? A minute. Well, then. “Pull yourself together,” I thought to myself. “And for the love of Farvardin, stop sweating so damned much.”

My two-hour (?!) tour of the third floor ended quite like it began. Staring at the door between Carnegie and Gateway. Was I really going to give up this easy? The stairs were right… over…

Yeah, that was enough. I knew I was slick, but I’m no James Bond. And as for my dance partner? Well. I’ve never been so insulted in my life. He never spoke a word to me, didn’t even look me in the eye. I guess that’s what you get for free, Friday-night dance lessons at a tech school.

Learn from my mistakes.