Recovered Story
I wrote this story weeks ago and subsequently lost it. While cleaning my room just now I found it again. This kind of thing is one of the only good reasons I want a mobile device. So many blog entries wind up as crumpled paper on the floor.
The sun makes you feel everything differently. I was bussing home yesterday and my pineal gland kept telling me it was late afternoon even though my clock was telling me it was almost nine. I was thinking about this, amongst other things, when I was heading to the transit tunnel. I didn't find the entrance I'm used to. What I found was a metal screen over the entrance, and a combination of alarm lights and sirens that I've come to think of as "Quickly put whatever you're doing in the fume hood and get the hell out of the lab."
My lab experience keeps having applications in the oddest places.
This emergency display was exacerbated by the fact that the sign that normally reads "Transit Tunnel North Bay A & B" instead read "Emergency Ventilation has been activated, evacuate immediately." I had just long enough to go through a good series of emotional displays conveying my shock before I heard the kind of calm automated voice that normally warns people that they have 5 minutes until nuclear self destruction repeat the signs terrifying message.
In the resulting state of awed fear that comes from realizing I had narrowly avoided being the victim of a terrorist attack I leaned back against a wall and found the unwelcome company of a sign jabbing me in the back.
This is when I learned that the tunnel had been closed for two hours.
What the Fuck?
Seriously metro, or Sound Transit, or whoever the hell runs this thing. You don't just leave that kind of siren running. And I'm not even getting into the issue of having the metal screen down at the same time that you have the evacuation alarms going off. That's the kind of thing I expect from a super villain. Not a public transit organization.
The sun makes you feel everything differently. I was bussing home yesterday and my pineal gland kept telling me it was late afternoon even though my clock was telling me it was almost nine. I was thinking about this, amongst other things, when I was heading to the transit tunnel. I didn't find the entrance I'm used to. What I found was a metal screen over the entrance, and a combination of alarm lights and sirens that I've come to think of as "Quickly put whatever you're doing in the fume hood and get the hell out of the lab."
My lab experience keeps having applications in the oddest places.
This emergency display was exacerbated by the fact that the sign that normally reads "Transit Tunnel North Bay A & B" instead read "Emergency Ventilation has been activated, evacuate immediately." I had just long enough to go through a good series of emotional displays conveying my shock before I heard the kind of calm automated voice that normally warns people that they have 5 minutes until nuclear self destruction repeat the signs terrifying message.
In the resulting state of awed fear that comes from realizing I had narrowly avoided being the victim of a terrorist attack I leaned back against a wall and found the unwelcome company of a sign jabbing me in the back.
This is when I learned that the tunnel had been closed for two hours.
What the Fuck?
Seriously metro, or Sound Transit, or whoever the hell runs this thing. You don't just leave that kind of siren running. And I'm not even getting into the issue of having the metal screen down at the same time that you have the evacuation alarms going off. That's the kind of thing I expect from a super villain. Not a public transit organization.
posted by Max at 10:10 PM
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