Below the 500th floor
A thread about skyscrapers getting bigger and bigger (“Hooray for phallic symbols!”) inspires this short story by freebird:
It’s been a long time since I rode the elevator down below the 500th floor.
My papers are in order, and my passport is current, but there’s still that moment of uncertainty as you leave America. Not worried if you’ll be able to leave - relations with the Commonwealth are good, which gets you down to the 400th with no more hassle than walking on the wrong side of the pedway - but worried if you’ll get back. The long lines of immigrants and asylum seekers clog and strain the escalators at the border, and it’s easy to imagine a minor bureaucratic error leaving you stranded in their midst.
And I’ll be coming from even lower - when they see you get off that elevator from the third world, Homeland Security gets out the special manuals. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure they have working elevators down there anymore. Other than the occasional NATO Building Maintenance Expedition, we don’t have alot of contact with the lowest floors like Syria.
I continue down. I need to rent a helicopter to get from 382 to 380, since a revolution has closed the elevators and the escalators are plagued by snipers. Some thugs chase me out of 238, ranting about Satan America but clearly just interested in my wallet. I knew this kind of hassle would be part of the job, but usually work just takes me to parts of America in other buildings, not downstairs out of the country. My health plan is good and I’ve had my shots, but these people seem to live in another world!
Eventually, in a maintenance room in the depths of some middle-eastern country I don’t even know the floor numbers for, I find what I need. Unlocking the rusty old locker, I reach inside to the ancient keyboard and type the message which is the same in every language on every floor of the world: “CTL-ALT-DEL”.
I watch the server reboot, then start the long slow journey back upstairs to America.
