building one

Originally uploaded by doktoratom.

I woke up this morning, saw the clock across the room, and realized I had overslept… crap. I thought I was going to be late. I think I dozed off again anyway, and awoke again, finding myself in the lobby of the building where I work, in midtown New York. Damn, I thought, I didn’t have time to take a shower. Oh well, I can go without a shower for one day…

I got into the elevator in a hurry. Two slightly older, slightly more mature but casually dressed guys got into the elevator as well. We all pushed our buttons for our floors and the door closed. The elevator immediately shot upward at breakneck speed and we all realized there was something wrong. These elevators go pretty fast, but you can’t usually feel it, beyond that slight weightless feeling you get for a moment when it begins to move. It was whirring and whooshing and apparently not going to stop. It was steadily headed to the top, which was only the 50th floor. I wondered, with a bit of panic, whether the elevator mechanism would slow it down or stop it automatically at the top, or whether it would smash through the roof of the building like Willy Wonka’s great glass elevator at the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, except that this one would not fly on its own power; it would eventually (as in immediately) plummet fifty stories and smash down on the ground below. It was obvious, though, that this elevator wasn’t going to stop before the top of the building.

One of the casual guys pressed a button (but not the “STOP” button, for some reason) and then grabbed at the vertical slot where the two doors close together. With great exertion, he began to pry the doors apart. This struck me as incredibly stupid. He was able to get them half way apart, and I could see the framework of the elevator shaft, and the inside of the building, each floor rushing by. He leaned out and stuck his head out as if trying to fix something, which also struck me as even more incredibly stupid. Amazingly, no object that whizzed by was close enough to decapitate or rip any part of his body away. I looked out and saw nothing in particular that would be causing this malfunction. There was only a small white plastic bag like what you get when you buy something at the drugstore. This was hanging off of the elevator’s outer mechanism, the gears and pulleys and such, but it didn’t appear to be impeding the process at all. While this was happening, I also looked over to my left at the panel to note this elevator’s number so as never to take it again, and possibly to complain to the management later. On a big white square, it said “5″.

The moment had arrived… we finally reached the 50th floor, and to mine and everyone else’s relief I’m sure, the elevator simply stopped. I was able to look out, and as I had never been to floor fifty, was surprised to see that it was one large room taking up the entire floor, itself about three stories high, like a large greenhouse with enormous windows all around where you could see the entire city. On the floor way below us were some type of plants or bushes, very neatly arranged and looking almost artificial, looking like some type of secret hydroponics experiment. It seemed closed off to the public. I couldn’t discern what exactly it was or why it was there.

We were apparently now at the very top, on the roof of the building but still in an enclosed glass elevator shaft. I was looking down through a glass roof at this garden. I also just then noticed that our elevator now had windows! I turned around and found that I was looking out at a large hill beside the building. This also struck me as odd because I thought we were simply in the middle of the city, near only a lot of other buildings. But next to us stood a very steep, very green hill that somehow didn’t fit the description of “mountain”. And next to that, the very blue, peaceful-looking sea on lovely, bright day, upon which happy boats sailed. The mountain (hill) itself was very artificial looking, the green grass that grew all over it looked almost to be the color and consistency of the grasslike stuff that is used to line a child’s Easter basket.

I recklessly pushed my floor button, a little sad to leave this view, and now as it began to descend again quickly, slightly worried that the broken elevator would simply plummet back to the ground. But to my relief the elevator proceeded down at a relatively normal speed and arrived safely at the 41st floor. I exited the elevator and went to work, I was still on time.