1. alarm, hallway, insects

The alarm-clock clanging, I stepped out of bed and pounded the button, taking in the spectacle as my closed fist threatened to send gears and cogs flying everywhere under the excessive force. I stretched my arms high for a moment, and eyed the plastic bin sitting in my closet that carried my toothbrush, among other bathroom effects. It was rank with mold and mildew, as it was not a basket proper, but a plastic bin, without any holes to allow water to flow out. This is a design that, as you know, is prone to fill up with water every time it is brought into the shower, and that water of course festers as it is wont to do when it is ignored and allowed to sit for spans of time stretching into minutes, as in my case. I didn’t have much time, for my cloud appreciation class was to start in just under 45 milliseconds, and I had already been warned about my intemperate lateness this semester. With this in mind I quickly slipped a towel around my waist and stepped out into the hallway.

My sandaled foot found its place on the metal grating just outside my door. My room in the dormitory is rather modestly sized and equipped with the standard furnishings you’d expect for an undergraduate student. That’s why I always experience a wave of vertigo when I step out into the hallway, as I have for the past several years. Although it is called a hallway, it is actually a metal-grate footbridge traversing a cavernous room. There is only one flimsy hand-rail, which can be disconcerting because at this time every morning (when the students are getting ready for classes), the bridge is suspended about .83 kilometers in the air joining all of the rooms on the 240th floor, which is the students’ living quarters.

Looking down, you can see doors lining the metallic walls on every floor, and in the center of the room, the green-tinted fog gradually becomes so dense that you can’t really see more than 100 or so stories down. In some places elaborate machinery protrudes through the mist with an unsettling boldness, and even though it is actually about 300 meters away, the general consensus of the students is that it blankets the entire dormitory with a perpetual air of intrusion.

My dormitory was about halfway down the hall to the bathroom, so I lumbered over with as much resolve as I could muster having just woken up, sandals noisily clanging on the metal with each belaboured step. I passed several people on the way there, also going about their daily routines as enthusiastically as possible, although the faceless footbridge traffic seemed unusually light for a weekday morning. No matter; partially because of the clear path I made it to the bathroom door in just about 8 milliseconds, which I figured gave me enough time maybe to even shave before class for a change.

The sticky moist atmosphere allowed the bathroom to serve as the primary breeding ground for a certain species of small black gnat with huge circular wings that bore no slight semblance to Mickey Mouse. I felt a sudden urge to skip out on class and curl up with some graham crackers and old Steamboat Willie cartoons. “Living, breathing Disney advertisements”, I thought to myself, smirking inwardly at the aptness of my metaphor, and made a mental note to include that description when I wrote about the strange creatures in my blog that night. Then the thought occurred to me that I had never actually considered whether, or if so, by what facilities, insects actually breathe.