Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Martin Cheese: The Real Deal

I seriously can't believe the amount of misinformation about that week. None of the local papers could agree on the story, they were all reporting different things, and the national press didn't even show anything, except maybe an inch or two in the 'strange but true' section a week later. I guess that's just because nobody was sure what had happened at the time.

Now, the one I'm tempted to side with is the anarchist theory. Did you hear that? A radical left wing group decided to test how a small society, a closed community like the campus, was going to cope with the breakdown of law and order. So they started dosing the water supply with hallucinogens. I guess it makes sense, if you've got that kind of mindset. There was chaos, that much was clear. They would probably have gone further if the army hadn't rolled up at the eleventh hour.

Now, I know everyone on campus was affected, some of them more than others. So you'll never get a clear story. But I was really there, not just on campus, but actually there there. So I know what happened for those few days better than anyone else in the world.

It was a Tuesday evening I think. I'd come up here, as it happens, hoping to apologise to Ferrari. I think we kind of bumped heads in the corridor, and I left feeling really bad even though neither of us had been paying that much attention. So I came decided to pay a visit to the LUSARS, but the fire door was closed. You know, at the end of the corridor.

I was standing on a tiny landing, pacing back and forth. I looked over the walls, peeling off-white paint and pinned up notices advertising for student societies and second hand textbooks. While I was waiting I thought about taking down some of the older signs, just to clean the place up a bit. I thought, it's got to be better to have some kind of tidiness. But then, I wasn't in any clubs in this building, it really wasn't my job. It would be nice if the place was tidy, but I wasn't going to waste my time and effort cleaning up someone else's mess when they were too lazy. That's one of the ways I got to where I am in the business world, keeping a close eye on what's my responsibility and what isn't.

Anyway, I kept on glancing at the fire door. A heavy wooden thing, the kind that takes twenty seconds just to slowly drift closed, and then you can't tell whether it's locked or not without leaning against it with your full weight. I'd knocked a few times, and lifted the cover so I could peer through the keyhole, but there was no sign of anyone on the other side. It was about the most frustrating thing I could imagine at that point, even worse than the interminable waiting for a pink slip from the publishing company.

Eventually, I guessed your clubhouse must be empty, and I should go downstairs. I pressed the button on the elevator, and then I waited, but it just didn't come. I pressed it again, both of them, and I waited until I couldn't stand it any more. I even pushed the button beside the freight elevator, though I was pretty sure that should have needed a key to call it. It turned out to be unlocked, and I could just press the button. But there was no light, no sign that the electronics had even noticed my touch. So eventually, I had to go for the stairs.

Two floors down, I was already out of breath. I don't know what it is about those stairs, maybe they're steeper than normal or something. Or maybe the anarchists already put something in the air, though of course I didn't know about that at the time. I just felt like I was going to cough my lungs up. So I thought I'd go inside on the third floor, maybe get a coffee and then try the lift again. I pushed the door open and stopped on the other side for another breather, I didn't know what was wrong with me. As the door swung closed, I heard footsteps on the stairs. They were heavy steps, and one clang ran into the next until the rails and the whole metal structure was ringing.

I stood back against the wall, trying to look through at the stairwell. It was weird enough that there were people on the stairs anyway, but that kind of made sense if the lifts were out. But they must be running, so many at once, some instinct told me there was something weird going on. The doors that led to the stairs had windows in, vertical glass strips next to the push plates, but they had notices and stuff on them so often that they were covered in stray scraps of sticky tape. So I was peering through a strip half an inch wide, I didn't have a clear view. I saw six guys come up the stairs, perfectly in step. I guess that's why the structure was resonating so much. I wondered if it was one of the sports clubs, racing up and down the stairs for training. The doors are heavy enough I might not have heard them if I hadn't had it open, so maybe they do this kind of thing every day. I didn't think it was likely though; the real sports teams were all in the Carter Building, so Mendeleev was just misfits and also-rans.