Posthuman Blues

I was sifting through my email when the fire alarm went off.

This had happened before, so I didn't panic. Far from it: I kept typing, pretty sure some drunk had tripped the alarm or something equally innocuous; my "building" is actually two identical nine-floor towers. Each floor in each tower possesses at least one smoke detector linked to a general, apartment-wide alarm system, so the odds of a given alarm responding to a conflagration in my immediate vicinity are fairly slim -- basically one in eighteen.

"Yes," you might be thinking, "but fire has a curious tendency to spread." But my brain just doesn't assess risks like this. Maybe some of it's my apartment building's sheer age -- it's been around since the 1920s; what are the chances of a towering inferno during my residency? So I kept on clicking and looking at pictures of Mars and trying to ignore the ear-splitting wailing and buzzing coming from the hall, which had rudely interrupted the dour electronica of David Bowie's "Outside."

Then I noticed Ebe, one of my cats, perched on top of my monitor and pointedly sniffing the air. That got my attention. I opened the door, saw smoke -- not a lot, but enough to suggest a minor kitchen fire on a neighboring floor -- opened a window to let in clean air for the cats and trudged down the stairs to the lobby accompanied by a striking short-haired girl from, it turns out, the apartment directly below mine (although I'd never seen her before, which is really quite fucking typical and probably just as well).

Firemen tromped into the lobby within minutes of my arrival. They thoughtfully left the alarm on for the benefit of any coma victims who might not have noticed it and headed for the fire (or the remains of it); I later found out it was a cooking accident on 8, undoubtedly related to the fishy reek I mentioned in the last post. Maybe the fish I smelled hadn't yet been cooked. Which raises the question: Who cooks fish at 2:00 AM?

Meanwhile, I sat on a table next to the girl from floor 8 watching lots of distressed old people who will doubtlessly spend the next few weeks relating this incident to anyone who will listen. And although I was sure my cats would be fine, especially with an open window and the presence of firemen who didn't appear too rattled, I nevertheless felt worthless for not bringing them downstairs with me.

Finally the alarm was shut off and tenants were allowed back in their apartments. I said goodnight to the girl on 8 (probably asleep a few meters beneath me as I type this) and found my cats holding up well, if a bit skittish from the noise. Curiously, I found my door locked. I don't remember locking it, although I suppose I certainly could have in the heat of the moment.

And that's that. The hive was briefly disturbed; now we can all resume our regularly scheduled programming, barricaded in our customized cells of masonry, wiring and groaning pipes. In all probability I'll never know who locked my door. And I predict I'll never see the girl from floor 8 again; homeostasis precludes such neat certainties and happy endings.

It's very late. On the bridge down the street, the bulbous red lanterns have been turned off for the night, and the streets have emptied.

(Scattered city lights like suns in a derelict galaxy; the uneasy promise of dawn.)