Merry and I had just gotten married and were living on the seventh floor of a gorgeous new apartment complex. We were lying on the bed, and I realized I had to go to the bathroom. There was a small hallway leading out of the bedroom, and on the left were glass walls through which you could see the bathroom and study. Since it was brand new, we didn't have any blinds yet. The way it was set up, I had to run around to the front and go through the study to get to the bathroom. Merry and I switched places spontaneously, so I had to go back out one more time.

Because the walls were clear, I realized I could grow cells on them. I needed a large number of mouse melanoma cells to be grown up for an experiment, so I basically sprayed them on. I was worried the surface was too large, meaning my cells would be too sparse to grow, but when I looked close I could see little clusters. I was worried about having to scrape the cells off later, because doing so mechanically could damage them. I wondered if I could spray trypsin on the walls and have it stay on long enough to get the cells off.

But at that moment, my brother (I don't have one in real life) and his wife came into the study. I left and went downstairs, where I looked for an found a sarcophagus in a room. It was white with thick walls, and apparently contained the remains of some king (the lid was on). I was in an Indiana Jones-like role and started looking for inscriptions as I walked over it, despite the fact that I knew this room existed in the house for a long time. I had some assisstants, but ultimately I left without finding anything. When I got back upstairs and back into bed, I was bothered by the idea that I was sleeping in a room directly above a sarcophogus. I went into the bathroom and Merry started helping me scrape the cells off the walls. She was using a big plastic scoop, which filled up pretty fast. When she had gotten about one-third of the way through the study wall, we found that the rest of the cells and media had turned into a thick jello, so we stopped with the scoop and though about just ripping big chunks off into a bigger container.

I left to go find one, and the hallways turned into a first person video game. I had a limited inventory (I was now wearing a trenchcoat for storage) and was having to be selective about which items to pick up. I knew that I could make some powerful weapons out of things like airhorns and calipers, but I was having trouble  remembering the proper combination. I ran into my brother in one of the shady, smoky rooms off the hallway, and he was likewise gathering items for later assembly. When I got back to my study brandishing some kind of jury-rigged gun, I finally realized I had never gone to the bathroom. Merry was still waiting in the bedroom, so I was in a rush. However, every time I tried to enter the bathroom, the room would go black and I would have some kind of rubberbanding sensation, pulling me away from the door. I finally snapped through one time and got back to Merry.

Later on, I had gone out of the building and had to come back in through the dilapidated lobby. It looked like my old apartment building from grad school, except as if it had been abandonded for a decade. I stepped into the elevator and mistakenly pushed eight. Just as I was pushing seven, I realized that two-thirds of the elevator floor was missing, and that debris was strewn about, meaning that any little slip or trip would send me down the elevator shaft. Worse, the elevator went straight past both of the floors I had pressed, and even past what I thought was the top floor: it went from 10 to 20 in agonizingly slow time. When I finally hit the top, I repeatedly jabbed the seven and eight buttons, but then realized I should try a different elevator. I grabbed the outside of the doors to hold onto and quickly but carefully leaped out. The other elevator was normal width, but had a very shallow depth. There was only one button on the left side, a large clear seventh floor button that jutted out in the form of a broad, rounded switch. On the right side were two normal buttons for the lobby and fourth floors. The seventh floor button refused to stay lit for more than a second. It was then that I felt my pockets and realized that I had left my wallet and keys in the lobby. So I rode it all the way down and saw them on the floor, just under the call buttons. There was a security guard there, and I felt temporary relief that someone could help me out.

posted by Larry at 1:10 PM